Largest city along the Oregon side of the Columbia River outside the Portland Metropolitan area
General Information
Individual shops, restaurants, museums, and attractions operate with varying hours
Museums, tours, restaurants, and attractions may charge separate fees
How to Get There
From Hood River (20 mi): Take I-84 east along the Columbia River Gorge and continue to the downtown exits for riverfront parks, museums, restaurants, and historic districts in the city.
Overview
The Dalles is the largest city of Wasco County, Oregon. It is the largest city along the Oregon side of the Columbia River outside the Portland Metropolitan area.
The name of the city comes from the French word dalle, meaning either "sluice", akin to English "dale" and German T[h]al, "valley", or "flagstone", referring to the columnar basalt rocks carved by the river (in voyageur French used to refer to rapids), which was used by the French-Canadian employees of the North West Company to refer to the rapids of the Columbia River between the present-day city and Celilo Falls. Also in the same area was the Petite Dalles or Little Dalles, or Short Narrows. In French, "Les dalles" means "the slabs". When a river flows over hard flat rocks, it becomes shallow, and rapids are created.
- Columbia Gorge Discovery Center & Museum, the official interpretive center for the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area
- Fort Dalles Museum, Oregon's oldest history museum located in the Surgeon's Quarters built in 1856 at Fort Dalles
- Pulpit Rock, used by Methodist missionaries to preach to Native Americans
This article uses material from the Wikipedia articles "The Dalles, Oregon", which are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
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