It was ideally located to command the steamwheeler traffic on the Columbia River. Every trader, trapper, pioneer, and prospector heading into the upper Columbia region passed by Marcus.

It wasn’t always known as "Marcus." When the fur traders dominated the Northeastern area it was known as "Old Fort." Later it came to be called "White’s Landing." When a distinguished trader named Marcus Oppenheimer opened a general store that controlled the town and he prospered in a big way. The town gradually assumed a new name, it became "Marcus," and the name stuck. When Oppenheimer arrived in 1863 he realized that the site was centrally located and that Marcus could benefit from this. But it was a long wait for Oppenheimer, it was 1885 before it was given post office status, when its population was holding at the 50 mark.

But the town slowly began to live up to its expectations. Buy 1910 its population sky rocketed to nearly 300 souls.

The gold and silver minds on both sides of the Columbia River were yielding hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of precious ore, and this coupled with renewed confidence after nearly ten years prosperity, made firm the position of Marcus.

As luck goes, those bonanza years declined as the silver and gold was depleted. And the gloom intensified when the once great Northport Smelter finally closed and was taken down.

So Marcus, like other boom towns in upper Northeastern Washington moved into the depression years. But the greatest shock was yet to come, an announcement that was to doom the townsite of Marcus upon which it stood. Marcus would be flooded by the rising waters of a new lake created by the completion of Grand Coulee Dam. Finally in 1940, after the completion of the dam, the unavoidable happened, silently Marcus slipped into its grave beneath the waters of the mighty Columbia River.

Today there is a new Marcus, high on a bench above the original townsite. It’s a neat little town, but it doesn’t quite have that style of that first Marcus.