Ione, WA

Ione is a Pend Oreille County town on the west bank of the Pend Oreille River, where the 2020 census counted 428 residents. Elmer Hall settled the area in 1894, and Ione incorporated in 1910. Cement Mountain rises about a mile north; Molybdenite Mountain towers across the river. Big Muddy, Little Muddy, and Cedar Creeks join the Pend Oreille near town.

Selkirk School District now covers Ione along with Metaline and Metaline Falls; the town's elementary school closed in 2005. Timber once set Ione's rhythm. Frederick A. Blackwell's Panhandle Lumber Company opened the Inland Northwest's first all-electric sawmill here, and the lumber economy lasted nearly a century. Vaagen Brothers' sawmill, the last major sawmill in the county, closed in 1995. Hydroelectric work now fills part of that economic role: Box Canyon Dam is operated by Pend Oreille County Utilities District and Boundary Dam by Seattle City Light. Ione's map joins river, mountain, creeks, timber, and power infrastructure in a narrow northeastern Washington valley.