[3] The Dalles Dam, 9 miles (14 km) downstream on the Columbia River, was completed in 1957, and began filling Lake Celilo.

State Route 14 runs east–west through the community, traveling west towards Vancouver and Dallesport and east towards Maryhill; it intersects with two U.S. highways that provide access to Oregon via bridges over the Columbia River.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the Wishram CDP has a total area of 1.3 square miles (3.3 km2), all of it land.

Wishram lies toward the upper end of the Columbia River Gorge, which began forming as far back as the Miocene (roughly 12 - 17 million years ago), depositing thick layers of Columbia River Basalt, and continued to take shape through the Pleistocene (700,000 - 2 million years ago).

[5] Although the river slowly eroded the land over this period of time, the most drastic changes took place at the end of the last ice age when the Missoula Floods cut the steep, dramatic walls that exist around Wishram today.

[5] The area of Wishram was located 1⁄2 mile (0.8 km) above the head of the great Celilo Falls on the Columbia, and as a result has been populated for an extended period.

[7] They built wooden platforms out over the water and caught salmon with dipnets and long spears on poles as the fish swam up through the rapids and jumped over the falls.

[8] Celilo Falls and The Dalles were strategically located at the border between Chinookan and Sahaptian-speaking peoples and served as the center of an extensive trading network across the Pacific Plateau.

[10] In 1912 the unincorporated town was known as "Fallbridge", named in recognition of the southern extension of the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway, which crossed the Columbia on the Oregon Trunk Rail Bridge constructed on the basalt rock of Celilo Falls.

In his journal for October 22, 1805, Clark recorded:[12] "below this Island on the main Stard Shore is 16 Lodges of nativs; here we landed a fiew minits to Smoke, the lower point of one Island opposite which heads in the mouth of Towarnehiooks River (Deschutes River) which I did not observe until after passing these lodges about 1/2 a mile lower passed 6 more Lodges on the Same Side and 6 miles below the upper mouth of Towarnehiooks River the commencement of the pitch of the Great falls, opposite on the Stard.

at the lower part of those rapids we arrived at 5 Large Lodges of nativs drying and prepareing fish for market, they gave us Philburts, and berries to eate, we returned droped down to the head of the rapids and took every article except the Canoes across the portag where I had formed a camp on ellegable Situation for the protection of our Stores from Thieft, which we were more fearfull of, than their arrows.

Indians assisted us over the portage with our heavy articles on their horses, the waters is divided into Several narrow chanels which pass through a hard black rock forming Islands of rocks at this Stage of the water, on those Islands of rocks as well as at and about their Lodges I observe great numbers of Stacks of pounded Salmon neetly preserved in the following manner, i e after Suffiently Dried it is pounded between two Stones fine, and put into a species of basket neetly made of grass and rushes of better than two feet long and one foot Diamiter, which basket is lined with the Skin of Salmon Stretched and dried for the purpose, in theis it is pressed down as hard as is possible, when full they Secure the open part with the fish Skins across which they fasten tho the loops of the basket that part very Securely, and then on a Dry Situation they Set those baskets the Corded part up, their common Custom is to Set 7 as close as they can Stand and 5 on the top of them, and secure them with mats which is raped around them and made fast with cords and Covered also with mats, those 12 baskets of from 90 to 100 w. each form a Stack.

He stated: "For like reason we would make especial mention of the village of Wishram, at the head of the Long Narrows, as being a solitary instance of an aboriginal trading mart, or emporium.

Hither the tribes from the mouth of the Columbia repaired with the fish of the sea-coast, the roots, berries, and especially the wappatoo, gathered in the lower parts of the river, together with goods and trinkets obtained from the ships which casually visit the coast.

The merchant fishermen at the falls acted as middlemen or factors, and passed the objects of traffic, as it were, cross-handed; trading away part of the wares received from the mountain tribes to those of the rivers and plains, and vice versa: their packages of pounded salmon entered largely into the system of barter, and being carried off in opposite directions, found their way to the savage hunting camps far in the interior, and to the casual white traders who touched upon the coast.

Visitors included Thomas Farnham, Hudson's Bay Company Governor Sir George Simpson, Alexander Ross, Father Pierre De Smet and Joseph Drayton's party of the Wilkes Expedition, among others.

Archeologists in the 1950s identified a multilevel site with centuries of waste accumulated in middens as well as petroglyphs and other indications of dense population.

Still located in its original position 100 feet (30 m) east of the passenger train station today, it consists of two columns of basalt bound together with iron straps and mounted on a pedestal.

Recognizing its central location, a 300-ton automatic coaling station was erected for the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railroad at Fallbridge in 1920.