Kanaskat was a small facility on the Northern Pacific Railway, today's BNSF Railway, created by the opening of a cut-off between Palmer, Washington and Auburn, Washington, built 1899-1900 by the Northern Pacific's contractors Horace C. Henry and his partner Nelson Bennett.

The ornate Victorian station at this site was destroyed by fire in 1944 when a wood stove pipe through the roof overheated.

After World War Two the Northern Pacific replaced the box car with a solid brick station.

This lasted until 1959, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were forced to build the Northern Pacific yet another station directly northwest of its postwar structure (due to the line change caused by the Corps of Engineer's Howard A. Hanson Dam at Eagle Gorge).

[2][3] The town was named after Kanasket (alternately spelled Kanaskat), a chief of the Klickitat people, who was killed by the U.S. Army ca.