About Wasco County
Wasco County
Wasco County, Oregon was established on January 11, 1854, and was named for the Wasco (or Wascopam) Indian tribe. At the time it was created it was the largest county in America, stretching from the Cascades in the west to the Rockies in the east, and from the Columbia River in the north down to the California border.
Currently, Wasco County is home to 25,775 people, and covers approximately 2,400 square miles square, with the County seat located in The Dalles. Now the trading hub of north-central Oregon, The Dalles gained earlier fame as the town at the end of the Oregon Trail. Thousands of years before that, Native Americans painted pictographs and etched petroglyphs on rocks overlooking the Columbia River in this area.