[6] John Work, an agent for The Hudson's Bay Company, established Fort Colvile near the Kettle Falls fur trading site in 1825.

It replaced the Spokane House and the Flathead Post as the main trading center on the Upper Columbia River.

The site was flooded by Lake Roosevelt after construction of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River.

It was settled by the Oregon Treaty of 1846, which set the new boundary between Canada and the United States at the 49th Parallel, about Forty (40) miles to the north.

In late 1871, with the resolution of Hudson's Bay Company land claims, Governor Edward Selig Salomon directed John Wynne to accept those lands which extended south to Orin-Rice Road, including some currently part of the City of Colville.

In January 1883, W. F. Hooker filed the first plat in Stevens County with the name "Belmont"[9] or "Bellmond".

[10] He was encouraged to change the plat name to Colville so that the county seat could be moved to this location.

In that meeting, commissioners allowed moving the county seat and jail to the town with the name of Colville, if proprietors provided a block of land for them without cost.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 2.93 square miles (7.59 km2), all of it land.

Tourism has increased to the nearby National Forest Land for hunting and fishing, and to local farms, orchards and corn mazes.