Local city information for The Dalles, OR

This page is about the city in Oregon. For the nearby geological formation called The Dalles, see Celilo Falls. For other uses see Dalles.

The Dalles () is the largest city and county seat of Wasco County, Oregon, United States. The name of the city comes from the French word dalle (meaning either "sluice" or "flagstone" and referring to the columnar basalt rocks carved by the river), what the French-Canadian employees of the North West Company called the now-inundated rapids of the Columbia River between the present-day city and Celilo Falls. The population was 12,156 at the 2000 census and was estimated at 12,520 in 2006. Also in the same area was the Petite Dalles or Little Dalles, or Short Narrows, which is now also inundated.

Lewis and Clark camped near Mill Creek on October 25–27, 1805, and recorded the Native American name for the creek as Quenett. The first use of the name Dalles, according to Oregon Geographic Names, appears in fur trader Gabriel Franchère's Narrative, on April 12, 1814.

The Dalles was the end of the land route of the biannual "Express" between Fort Vancouver and York Factory and later figured as the last stretch in the Oregon Trail. In the fall of 1849 United States Army troops arrived in the new Oregon Territory and established a military outpost at The Dalles, with a log fort finished in 1850 and named Fort Dalles.

A post office was established within the boundaries of the current city in 1851, and The Dalles was incorporated as a city in 1857. It has been the major commercial center between Portland and Pendleton since.

In 1864, the U.S. Congress appropriated money to build a U.S. mint in The Dalles that was to use gold from Canyon City for coinage. The supply of gold from Canyon City began to dwindle, however, and other problems, such as cost over-runs, workers leaving to work the gold fields, and flooding from the Columbia River, also contributed to the project running two years behind schedule and led eventually to the project's demise. In 1870 the State of Oregon received the property from the U.S. Government and the building was put to other uses. The mint is now home to Erin Glenn Winery.

Construction of The Dalles Dam in 1957 submerged the Long Narrows and Celilo Falls.

In 1963, Ken Kesey's novel ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was published featuring the narrator Chief, who is from The Dalles.

In 1970, the Bonneville Power Administration opened the Celilo Converter Station nearby, the northern terminus of the Pacific DC Intertie which sends 3,100 megawatts of electricity to Los Angeles.

In 1986, Penalty Phase, a film starring Peter Strauss and Melissa Gilbert is filmed in and around The Dalles.,

In 2006, the Internet company Google began building a major data center, known locally as Project 02, along the Columbia River in The Dalles, using the area's reliable hydroelectric power and the underutilized fiber optic capacity of the area. The new complex includes two buildings, each approximately the size of a football field, and two cooling plants four stories high. The project has created hundreds of jobs in the area, mainly in construction, with an additional 60-200 permanent positions expected later in 2006.

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