Kettle Falls is a tiny town located in scenic northeast Washington, a community with deep roots in early regional history and a gateway to the equally deep-rooted trees of the Colville and Kaniksu National Forests. Though Kettle Falls no longer sits by the cascades which gave it its name, water is not far off, in this case the north end of Lake Roosevelt, the state's largest lake (courtesy of the Grand Coulee Dam, which backed this stretch of the Columbia River up 130 miles). This relatively recent geographical addition, now part of the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area, is a particularly popular spot during summer months, frequented by boaters, anglers, campers and a further assortment of outdoors-enthusiasts.
"Old" Kettle Falls disappeared beneath Lake Roosevelt along with eleven other local communities when the dam was completed in 1941; houses were bought and relocated by the government, structures were dismantled or destroyed, and Kettle Falls annexed itself a 60-foot strip of land leading to and including part of the town of Meyers Falls, renamed along with its new residents "Kettle Falls". These days it's possible to get glimpses of the area's more distant past, "pre-dam" on a ramble around what remains of Old Kettle Falls and on a visit to regional historic sights like St. Paul's Mission (the original Jesuit mission dating to the heyday of the Hudson Bay Company) just out side of Kettle Falls and Fort Spokane, a 19th-century military post located not far from Lake Roosevelt's big southern bend.
Today, other modest communities dot the region, most offering basic amenities for lake visitors.
Kettle Falls is eight miles northwest of Colville and around 80 miles northwest of Spokane.