Wallula, Washington — Junction Survived After the Town Went Underwater

Wallula occupies a transportation junction near the meeting of the Walla Walla and Columbia rivers that was useful long before an American town appeared there.

Indigenous travel and trade used the corridor first. Steamboats, railroads and highways later responded to the same geography, concentrating movement where river valleys and routes naturally converged.

McNary Dam changed the shoreline during the 1950s and inundated the old Wallula townsite. Streets and buildings disappeared beneath the reservoir, but transportation and industry remained clustered nearby because the underlying location had not stopped being useful.

The townsite went underwater. The junction survived it.