Nighthawk, Washington — Mining Country Where People Still Live

Nighthawk sits near the Similkameen River west of Oroville, close enough to Canada that mining and border-country history overlap in the same narrow valley.

Ore discoveries brought workers, stores and transportation activity during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When the mining boom faded, most of the commercial settlement disappeared and surviving structures acquired the ghost-town label familiar to visitors.

The label is useful only up to a point. Occupied properties remain, and Nighthawk still names a living rural locality rather than an abandoned museum piece.

The ruins tell the mining story. The residents keep the name in the present tense.