The Dalles is the largest city of Wasco County, Oregon, United States. The population was 16,010 at the 2020 census, and it is the largest city upon the Oregon side of the Columbia River in the company of the Portland Metropolitan Area, and Hermiston.

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 close Mill Creek on October 25–27, 1805, and recorded the Indian reveal for the creek as Quenett.

The declare 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 talk to to rapids), which was used by the French-Canadian employees of the North West Company to speak to to the rapids of the Columbia River between the present-day city and Celilo Falls. Also in the similar area was the Petite Dalles or Little Dalles, or Short Narrows. In French, “Les dalles” means “the slabs”. When a river flows over difficult flat rocks, it becomes shallow, and rapids are created.

The first use of the name Dalles, according to Oregon Geographic Names, appears in fur trader Gabriel Franchère’s Narrative, on April 12, 1814, referring to the long series of major rapids in the river. Starting in the 1810s, Americans and Europeans passed by what became The Dalles, active in the North American fur trade as employees of either the American Pacific Fur Company (PFC) or the Canadian North West Company (NWC). Men next NWC proprietor David Thompson voyaged both down and occurring the Columbia, traveling through Celilo Falls. The War of 1812 led to the 1813 liquidation of the PFC, its properties afterward Fort Astoria sold to the North West Company.