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The Klickitat County Agriculturist, Goldendale, WA., March 11, 1932, page 12

OLD FORT BLOCKHOUSE

Sunday's Portland Journal has a good picture of the old Blockhouse, which was moved to the courthouse grounds this week. The picture is made from a photograph by H.B. Carratt of Goldendale.
The historical records show that in 1856 the United States government recommended the construction of a military road across the Simcoe range from Fort Simcoe on the Yakima to the Klickitat valley and during the summer of that year a small fortification was erected on Spring Creek, seven miles north-west of Goldendale, and garrisoned with a troop of cavalry.
This little fort, known as the Blockhouse, as all Klickitat people know, was a log structure surrounded by an eight-foot stockade. The early settlers say that this building when first seen by them plainly showed marks of bullets fired by Indians in skirmishes with the soldiers. In 1860 the troops were removed.
The first immigrants began to arrive in the Klickitat valley late in the fifties. After the troops were removed the fort was used mostly as a stopping place for families and soldiers traveling at from Fort Simcoe, which was about 75 miles northeast of Goldendale on Toppenish creek, and Fort Dalles, across the Columbia river, where The Dalles is now located.
According to advises from old time Klickitat pioneers most of the Indian hostilities were centered at Cascades, now known as Cascade Locks, and the Klickitat Indians belonging to the Yakima, Rock Creek, and Celilo tribes, gathered with other tribes at that place.
About 20 years ago a number of Goldendale residents decided to move the Blockhouse and the logs were taken apart, brought to Goldendale and placed near the courthouse. After another lapse of time the Goldendale Grange secured permission to reassemble them and erected the Blockhouse where it now stands on a hill back of the town.
The Klickitat County Pioneers, led by Mrs. J.M. Stultz, have expressed a desire to take over the old fort after it is moved to the courthouse grounds, where plans are underway for a city park, and utilize it as a place to keep relics of pioneer days in the Klickitat valley.