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Pateros, Washington

Street in Pateros, 1964. In 1885, settler Lee Ives established a store and roadhouse at a point along the Columbia River that was home to around twenty Chinese miners and a small group of Indigenous residents. He named the spot Ives Landing and, in the years to come, Ives and his wife Rena opened a hotel and ferry crossing at the spot. Although the town was plagued by floods and a cricket infestation in 1893 and 1894, residents held on. In 1899, newly-arrived lawyer and landowner Charles E. Nosler, a veteran of the Spanish-American War, renamed the town after the Filipino village of Pateros. The railroad arrived in 1914, spurring the ranching and fruit farming community’s continued growth. Interestingly, Pateros was dry: it decided to ban alcohol in 1909, encouraging would-be drinkers to attend church services or the local literary and debate society instead. The US Army Corps of Engineers relocated Pateros before Wells Dam inundated the original townsite.