Qualla: Ellensburg

Ellensburg: Introduction

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Walter Siegmund (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Cross Snoqualmie Pass heading east on Interstate 90 and the landscape transforms - rain-soaked evergreen forest gives way to golden hills and big sky, and Ellensburg emerges in the Kittitas Valley like an oasis in the high desert. This college town of 21,000 is home to Central Washington University and the Ellensburg Rodeo, one of the oldest in the country, drawing cowboys and spectators every Labor Day weekend. It sits at the junction of I-90 and I-82, a crossroads where the road to Seattle meets the road to Yakima, where the wet west meets the dry east, where cowboys and academics share the same downtown.

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Image: Walter Siegmund (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ellensburg: The College Town

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bobak Ha'Eri, CC BY 3.0. Central Washington University dominates the town's identity, its students nearly doubling Ellensburg's population during the academic year. The campus spreads north of downtown, Barge Hall's red brick tower marking its center. The university brings the infrastructure of a larger ...

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Image: Bobak Ha'Eri | CC BY 3.0

Ellensburg: The Crossroads

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jon Roanhaus, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ellensburg sits at a junction - Interstate 90 from Seattle to Spokane, Interstate 82 from here to Yakima and beyond, US-97 climbing north over Blewett Pass to Wenatchee and the Okanogan country. The town has been a crossroads since before the highways, when the railroad stopped h...

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Image: Jon Roanhaus | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ellensburg: The Petrified Forest

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steven Pavlov, CC BY-SA 4.0. Thirty miles east on I-90, Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park preserves one of the most diverse fossil forests in the world. Over 200 species of trees have been identified in the basalt, frozen in stone when lava flows covered the forests millions of years ago. The interpretive c...

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Image: Steven Pavlov | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ellensburg: The Mountains to Sound

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Walter Siegmund (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Ellensburg sits on the Mountains to Sound Greenway, the corridor that connects Puget Sound to the Cascades crest and beyond. The greenway isn't a single trail but a concept - a protected route across the mountains that links urban Seattle to the wilderness of the crest to the dry...

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Image: Walter Siegmund (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0