Bissell Viewpoints

  Bissell was once a town along the Columbia four miles south of Gifford.  It sat among fruit orchards and people came from Colville to buy fruit.  It was also shipped down the river on steamboats.  In 1895 the post office established there was named for Wilson S. Bissell, the US postmaster at the time.
  Most Bissell pioneers however remember it as existing around a lake on a bench above the river.  The lake that is called Clark Lake today was once Murk's Lake and then Clark or Bissell Lake.  Wes Gourley had a sawmill on the lake and there were others up the creek that fed it.  Families cut ice from the lake, swam in it in the summer and skated on it in the winter.
  There are spots along Bissell Rd as it climbs up to Clark Lake that have sweeping vistas of Lake Roosevelt.  Even after you have made it up to the Clark Lake Bench and past the lake itself, the road presents some unique views across rolling hills lined with vegetation only in the valleys and fields on the top with the lake in the background.