Colville, Washington

Colville is a city in Stevens County, Washington, United States. The population was 4,673 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Stevens County.HistoryJohn Work, an agent for The Hudson's Bay Company, established Fort Colvile near the Kettle Falls fur trading site in 1825. It replaced the Spokane House and the Flathead Post as the main trading center on the Upper Columbia River.Americans also wanted to operate in this territory. In the first half of the 19th century, the Oregon boundary dispute (or Oregon question) arose as a result of competing British and American claims to the Pacific Northwest. It was settled by the Oregon Treaty of 1846, which set the new boundary between Canada and the United States at the 49th Parallel, to the north of Fort Colville. The post continued to be used for some time as a center of mining and transportation/supply support associated with gold rushes in the 1850s and 1860s, particularly with the Holcomb Valley Gold Rush in California. After it was abandoned in 1870, some buildings stood until as late as 1910. The site was flooded by Lake Roosevelt after construction of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River.