Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Winthrop, WA

Winthrop is a town in Okanogan County at the confluence of the Methow and Chewuch rivers, in the eastern foothills of the Cascade Mountains on the North Cascades Highway (State Route 20).

The town was founded in 1890, a few years after the Methow Valley — the homeland of the indigenous Methow people — was opened to white settlement in 1886, and it was named for author and explorer Theodore Winthrop.

Boston transplant Guy Waring opened Winthrop's first trading post and general store in January 1892 and built a spacious hillside home that locals nicknamed the 'Castle'; it now houses the Shafer Museum.

Waring's Duck Brand Saloon, opened in 1891, enforced unusually strict rules requiring drunk patrons to leave and forbidding bartenders from talking with customers, and the building was later converted into Winthrop's town hall.

Author Owen Wister wrote The Virginian, considered the first American western novel, after honeymooning in Winthrop in 1892 and 1898.

Winthrop was incorporated on March 12, 1924.

Anticipating the North Cascades Highway, which opened on September 2, 1972, Winthrop rebuilt two blocks of its downtown in 1971 in 1890s Old West style with false fronts and wooden boardwalks, and a 'Westernization' ordinance administered by a design review board still enforces the theme.

The 2020 census counted 504 residents in Winthrop, a sharp increase from the 394 residents counted in 2010.

Winthrop shares with nearby Mazama the coldest temperature ever recorded in Washington state: minus 48 degrees Fahrenheit on December 30, 1968.

Winthrop sits at an elevation of 1,745 feet and has a humid continental climate with cold, snowy winters and hot, dry summers, and summer wildfires periodically force evacuations and close the North Cascades Highway.