About 100 miles of steel track have linked Vancouver and Wishram for more than 100 years, which is why some Clark County residents will help the Columbia River Gorge community celebrate its centennial Saturday.
The birthday party will begin at 1 p.m. at Railroad Park, which commemorates Wishram’s history as a railroad town. The event will include live music, a barbecue and a beer garden.
The town was a major hub for the old Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway for decades. Some train crew members lived in Vancouver, said Dee Dee Gabbert Dillon, an event organizer.
“They were called ‘west-enders,'” said Dillon, a Vancouver resident who graduated from Wishram High School in 1963.
“There are a lot of railroaders here, and a lot of people from Wishram retired here,” Dillon said.
According to one researcher, some Wishram families sent their kids to high school in Vancouver.
Wishram’s roots go back more than 100 years, with one formative chapter dating to 1911 when George Bunn opened the first store.
The centennial observes the day in 1914 when Bunn went to Goldendale, the seat of Klickitat County, and filed a plat of the town. He registered it as Fallbridge — a railroaders’ name that noted the proximity to Celilo Falls and the railroad bridge over the Columbia River.
The name was changed in 1926 to Wishram, a nod to the Indian community that had been a trading center for centuries.
The unincorporated community now is a census-designated place rather than a town. (Population in the 2010 census: 342.)
For information on the centennial event, call Dillon at 360-254-2868 or Kathy Thiel in Wishram at the Pastime Tavern, 509-748-2527.
