Malden was once one of the largest and fastest growing communities in the Palouse region. It was the headquarters for the Columbia Division of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway. Malden was relatively unsettled before 1909. That was the year the railroad build a depot and roundhouse. The town continued to grow until the 1920s* when the railroad moved its operations out of Malden.
*In 1928, the population of Malden was 2,500 residents.
Click on the image below to view a few historical photographs of this storied Whitman County town.
(Photo credits are at the respective links in the slideshow.)
More historical information on Malden can be found in the book Whitman County : From Abbieville to Zion, Whitman County, Washington, 1985 and The Best of Palouse Magazine—both courtesy the Whitman County Library.
You can go directly to the Whitman Rural Heritage website here.
Read about Malden’s recovery from the 2020 wildfire and WSU landscape architecture student designs for the community.