"Wishram - a wide spot on the Rai ..." a Wishram Travel Page by glabah

Wishram started as a railroad town. The Spokane Portland & Seattle and its affiliated Great Northern Railway and Northern Pacific Railroad companies wanted to get into central Oregon. From there, they hoped to reach California.

To cross the Columbia River, they built a bridge across Celilo Falls (now covered by the river due to the construction of The Dalles Dam) and started building up the side of the Canyon on the other side of the river.

Wishram was the point where traffic from this new line would meet traffic on the main line between Vancouver, Washington and Spokane and other points east.

In the 1980s, agreements were reached to allow trains to go through without changing crews, in order to decrease the cost of operations.

That was the beginning of the end, as Wishram slowly decreased in importance.

It still has its freight yard, and serves as a community for the surrounding countryside. It has a school, and therefore is the closest community for some of the farming community.

However, it can't even be called a wide spot in the road. Wishram sits below a cliff that represented an obstacle to State Route 14, so SR14 was built over the top of the hill - bypassing the town.

Sitting above the town is a "suburb" community of a few residences and businesses that is known as "Wishram Heights", which serves as Wishram's presence on the main highway.

The city has a store, a locomotive monument, and a monument to all the various pioneers that had past that point on the Columbia.