Chewelah is located in central Stevens County, Washington, approximately 45 miles north of Spokane and 50 miles south of the Canadian border, on U.S. Highway 395. The town is situated on the floor of the Colville Valley at an elevation of 1,671 feet. The immediate surrounding area consists of productive farm land. The general terrain is mountainous benchland, forested mostly by conifers including cedar, larch (tamarack), fir and pine.
This boom town started during the 1880s, after the Old Dominion Mine had been discovered east of nearby Colville. The gold flowing from it started a stampede of prospectors who swarmed into the region.
In 1883, silver and lead deposits were discovered at Embry Camp. In a short span of time over twenty strikes were made in this area alone. But these strikes also soon petered out and Embry Camp soon vanished and Chewelah took over as its own. By 1910 Chewelah had a population of nearly 1,500 with a wide main street bordered by handsome buildings. Unlike other mining boom towns, the mines around Chewelah kept producing ore, well into the 1950s.
Today those mines of yesteryear are nothing more then a hole in the ground and lie silent with their storys of the past. But the town today, with its old yesteryear look and bonanza history is still there today to be seen in its unique way.
