Tonasket, WA

Tonasket is an Okanogan County city on the east bank of the Okanogan River, named for Chief Tonasket, whose people used the site as an encampment. The post office arrived in 1901, the town was platted in 1910, and incorporation followed in 1927. State Highway 97 cuts through town toward the Canadian border, with Siwash Creek to the north and Bonaparte Creek to the south. Chief Tonasket Park puts the riverfront back into the city map, with roughly 2,000 feet of shoreline beside the old railroad tracks. Tonasket is north-central Washington in a compact package: river, highway, orchard-and-forest country, and a name carried forward from the Okanogan people.