Cedonia, Washington — Above a Columbia River That Became a Lake

Cedonia lies in southern Stevens County, in country where farms and forest meet the enormous reservoir now called Lake Roosevelt.

That water changed the regional map. Before Grand Coulee Dam, the Columbia was a river corridor with its own settlements, crossings and shorelines. The rising reservoir erased some of those places and rearranged access to others.

Cedonia remained on higher ground, part of a sparsely settled district where ranches, farms and timber parcels are separated by considerable distance.

Its modern setting contains two different eastern Washington stories at once: old rural settlement on the uplands and a twentieth-century engineered shoreline below.

Lake Roosevelt looks permanent now. In Cedonia's history, it is the newcomer.