Dayton stands on an ancient trade corridor known as the Celilo Falls or Nez Perce Trail, and Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery passed through the heart of Dayton on their return from the Pacific Ocean on May 2, 1806. European settlers left the area during Indian skirmishes from 1855 to 1858, and stockman Jesse N. Day homesteaded west of town in 1859 before founding Dayton in 1871. Despite five devastating fires in the late 1800s, Dayton flourished through logging and farming booms, while agriculture sustained the community through the Great Depression of the 1930s and remains its lifeblood. The Columbia County Courthouse, completed in 1887 two years before Washington became a state in 1889, is Washington’s oldest courthouse; designed by local architect W.H. Burrows, it was built of Dexter brick and colossal fir and pine timbers hauled from the Blue Mountains by oxcart, then saved by a decade of citizen effort and restored in 1993, with the cupola, statuary, and ornamental stucco removed between 1930 and 1950 restored, original iron railings retained, and vintage but non-original American eagles and blind justices added. Dayton also includes the 1881 historic depot, the oldest existing railroad station in Washington, and the community established eastern Washington’s first public graded school in 1880 and the first public high school in Washington State in 1881. Many homes and commercial buildings, along with the railroad depot and courthouse, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.