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Nearby Shopping
Many shops line The Dalles Mainstreet from the oldest bookstore in Oregon, health food store, dining, wineries and breweries, secondhand shops, stationary, knitting, salons and barbers, artisan markets, music stores, bridal shop, gaming shops, frame store, furniture, yoga, movie theater and performance hall and much more.
Other sites to see are The Discovery Center, The Dalles Art Center, Fort Dalles, and the Neon Sign Museum...and more.
History
The area around The Dalles is known to have been a trading center for Native Americans as long as 10,000 years ago and is thus one of the oldest inhabited places in North America.
The site of what is now the city of The Dalles was a major Native American trading center. The general area is one of the continent's most significant archaeological regions. Lewis and Clark camped near Mill Creek on October 25–27, 1805, and recorded the Indian name for the creek as Quenett.
The name of the city comes from the French word dalle. In French, "les dalles" means "the slabs". When a river flows over hard flat rocks, it becomes shallow, and rapids are created.
In the early 1840s American settlers began to arrive in significant numbers, traveling overland via the Oregon Trail. The trail ended at The Dalles. It was not possible to take wagons farther west due to steep cliffs that fell straight into the Columbia River. Until the construction of the Barlow Road in 1846, the only way to reach Fort Vancouver and the Willamette Valley was by rafting down the river from The Dalles.
Construction of The Dalles Dam in 1957 submerged the Long Narrows and Celilo Falls. In 1970, the Bonneville Power Administration opened the Celilo Converter Station near the northern terminus of the Pacific DC Intertie which sends 3,100 megawatts of electricity to Los Angeles.
Small Town Vibe
Offering a small town feel with the magic of our landscape.
