Kittitas County, WA

Settlement & growth (pre-1960)

The original inhabitants of Kittitas County were the Kittitas band of the Yakama Nation, a Sahaptin-speaking people who lived along the Yakima River and its tributaries for thousands of years. Their seasonal rounds took them from winter villages near what is now Ellensburg to summer fishing and gathering grounds in the upper Kittitas Valley. The first non-Native explorers were fur traders and missionaries passing through in the 1840s, but permanent American settlement did not begin until after the Yakama War of 1855-1858, which forced the Kittitas people onto the Yakama Reservation. The first white settlers arrived in the 1860s, drawn by the promise of rich bottomland for cattle ranching and dryland wheat farming. These early pioneers were overwhelmingly of Northern European stock—English, Scots-Irish, and German—who came over the Cascade passes from the Willamette Valley or up from the Columbia River.

The arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1886 transformed the county. Ellensburg, platted in 1872, became the county seat and a rail hub for shipping wool, wheat, and livestock. The railroad also brought a wave of immigrant laborers, including Irish and Italian track workers, as well as Chinese laborers who built sections of the line. By the 1890s, a small Chinese community had formed in Ellensburg, operating laundries and restaurants, though discriminatory laws soon drove most away. The early 1900s saw the expansion of irrigated agriculture, particularly in the lower Kittitas Valley around Thorp and Kittitas, which attracted more German and Scandinavian homesteaders. The town of Cle Elum, founded as a coal-mining camp in the 1880s, drew a different mix: Welsh, Cornish, and Italian miners, along with a significant number of Finnish immigrants who worked the Roslyn and Ronald mines. The coal boom peaked around 1910, and these mining towns developed distinct ethnic neighborhoods that persisted for decades.

The Dust Bowl and Great Depression brought a modest influx of displaced farmers from the Great Plains, but Kittitas County’s population remained relatively stable through the mid-20th century. The post-World War II era saw a shift away from mining and toward timber and agriculture, with the construction of the Columbia River dams providing cheap hydroelectric power. The founding of Central Washington University (then Central Washington College of Education) in 1891 began to reshape Ellensburg’s economy, but it was not until the 1960s that the college’s growth started to drive significant demographic change. By 1960, the county’s population was roughly 20,000, overwhelmingly white and native-born, with the largest concentrations in Ellensburg, Cle Elum, and the agricultural communities of Kittitas and Thorp.

Modern era (post-1965)

The 1965 Hart-Cellar Act had a minimal direct impact on Kittitas County, as the region did not attract the large-scale immigration seen in coastal Washington cities. The foreign-born population remains very low at 2.0%, and the county’s racial composition has shifted primarily through domestic migration and natural increase rather than international arrivals. The most significant demographic change since 1965 has been the growth of the Hispanic population, which now stands at 10.3%. This community began to form in the 1970s and 1980s, as agricultural employers in the Kittitas Valley recruited migrant farmworkers from Mexico and later from Central America. Many of these workers settled permanently in Ellensburg and the smaller farming towns of Kittitas and Thorp, where they found year-round work in dairies, hay fields, and fruit orchards. Today, the Hispanic population is concentrated in Ellensburg’s lower-income neighborhoods and in the unincorporated areas around the valley’s agricultural operations.

The East/Southeast Asian population, at 1.5%, is a more recent arrival, largely tied to Central Washington University. A small but visible community of faculty, students, and professionals from China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam has formed in Ellensburg since the 1990s, drawn by academic and technical jobs. The Indian subcontinent population (0.3%) is similarly university-linked, with many working in tech or healthcare roles. The Black population remains very small at 1.0%, concentrated in Ellensburg and Cle Elum, and has grown only slightly since the 1970s, primarily through military and professional relocations. Domestic migration has been the dominant force shaping the county since 2000, with an influx of retirees and remote workers from the Seattle metropolitan area. These newcomers are drawn by lower housing costs, scenic beauty, and outdoor recreation, and they have concentrated in Ellensburg’s newer subdivisions and in the Cle Elum-Roslyn area, where second-home developments have boomed. This wave has increased the county’s college-educated share to 35.3% and has introduced a more politically diverse and culturally liberal element to a historically conservative region.