After more than twenty years, Chelan County Sheriff’s Office has a cruiser in Stehekin

STEHEKIN — “You can’t get there by car.” That’s the answer you’ll get if you ask anyone who’s ever been there how to get to Stehekin, the tiny community at the northwest end of Lake Chelan with fewer than 100 year-round residents.

The fact of the matter is, it’s hard to even get a car there at all. A quick Google search returns a result that practically insists on it, because there are no roads into Stehekin. There is no ferry that carries passengers and cars, like you might find in Western Washington. The only way to get a vehicle to the tiny town is to put it on a barge and ship it there, and that’ll cost you a few hundred dollars, so be sure you can’t just make do with one of the ATVs you can rent there to travel the one road that spans the lower Stehekin Valley.

But the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office has done it: They’ve permanently stationed a repurposed school resource officer’s SUV near the North Cascades Lodge in the picturesque community. The vehicle was in the process of being rotated out of service, so they got it for a much lower price than buying a new unit.

There is no deputy permanently on duty there, of course. Because Stehekin is part of the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area, most law enforcement needs are met by the National Park Service. But the Sheriff’s Office does respond to some incidents in Stehekin that the NPS is not equipped to handle, and they need a means of transportation. People live up to 20 miles away from the spot where you’d step off the ferry.

Deputies needing to use the cruiser would be transported by air or boat, depending on the urgency of their arrival. A flight up the lake would take around just 25 minutes in an emergency. Once on the ground, however, deputies are now free to travel the community without assistance.

Sheriff Mike Morrison calls the acquisition a reflection of the CCSO’s “commitment to serving all of our communities to the best of our ability.” Stehekin may be remote, but they are an integral and important part of Chelan County, and this move is meant to show just that.

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media