Chelan ( shə-LAN) is a city in Chelan County, Washington, United States. The estimated population was 3,850 at the 2010 census following a margin of error of ±15. The population was 4,222 at 2018 Estimate from Office of Financial Management. It lies on the southeast tip of Lake Chelan, where the lake flows into the Chelan River.

Chelan is allowance of the Wenatchee−East Wenatchee Metropolitan Statistical Area.

The native inhabitants of the Chelan area were the Chelan, a tribe of Salish-speaking Native Americans. Relatively Tiny is known roughly the culture and lifestyle of the in advance Chelan, as the tribe had adopted the dress, beadwork, and equestrian culture of the Plains Indians by the grow old of European contact. Infectious diseases including smallpox and measles arrived sometime prior to white settlement of the area, and had killed an estimated 90% of the Indians by the time swashbuckler David Thompson arrived on the Columbia in 1811.

Until this reduction tribal decision-making had been carried out by little family groups as not like-minded of a single chief. But as whites began to be of the same mind in the area, the Indians ascribed that consolidation of capability in a single representative would incite them preserve control of their ancestral lands. Though not a Chelan Indian himself, Chief Moses (a Shahaptin, not Salish speaker from the Columbia Basin and Okanagan) agreed to represent the tribe and was nearly successful in securing them a large Indian reservation. However, the tribe’s relatively low population designed that they were largely unable to defend their territory from the ever-increasing number of miners looking for material comfort in the mountains. As the unrest continued into the 1870s, Lt. Colonel Henry Clay Merriam of the United States Army normal Camp Chelan at the foot of Lake Chelan to run and safeguard the Indian population on the Moses Columbia Reservation. The lake was largely inaccessible because of its sheer cliffs upon most sides, so a makeshift road was built from the fort to the Columbia River where a courier and mail relief from Walla Walla were established. The fort operated for more or less a year and was forlorn in October 1880 similar to the troops relocated to Fort Spokane.