Rodna is an extinct town in

Spokane County Spokane County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, its population was 539,339, making it the fourth-most populous county in Washington. The largest city and county seat is Spokane, the second largest cit ...

, in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

. The

GNIS The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a database of name and locative information about more than two million physical and cultural features throughout the United States and its territories, Antarctica, and the associated states of ...

classifies it as a populated place. A post office called Rodna was established in 1912, and remained in operation until 1931. A variant name was Ray. Rodna was located in the far southeastern corner of Spokane County in the

Channeled Scablands The Channeled Scablands are a relatively barren and soil-free region of interconnected relict and dry flood channels, coulees and cataracts eroded into Palouse loess and the typically flat-lying basalt flows that remain after cataclysmic floods ...

. The defunct

Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway The Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway (SP&S) was a railroad in the northwest United States. Incorporated in 1905, it was a joint venture by the Great Northern Railway and the Northern Pacific Railway to build a railroad along the north bank o ...

ran through the site of the town, which is now accessible via the

Columbia Plateau Trail The Columbia Plateau State Park Trail is a , corridor in eastern Washington state maintained as part of the Washington State Park system. The rail trail runs along the abandoned right-of-way of the former Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway. ...

. Rodna's location is about two miles northeast of the Martin Road trailhead. The trail connects the site with the site of another ghost town, Mock, located 10 miles north along the trail. The unincorporated community of

Amber Amber is fossilized tree resin that has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Much valued from antiquity to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative objects."Amber" (2004). In Ma ...

and the small lake of the same name lie midway between the two ghost towns. There are restroom facilities at the Amber Lake trailhead but no other services in the small community. There are numerous lakes and ponds, almost all of which are oriented in a southwest-to-northeast direction due to the scouring erosion of the

Missoula floods The Missoula floods (also known as the Spokane floods or the Bretz floods or Bretz's floods) were cataclysmic glacial lake outburst floods that swept periodically across eastern Washington and down the Columbia River Gorge at the end of the last ...

, in the area surrounding Rodna.

References

Ghost towns in Spokane County, Washington Ghost towns in Washington (state) Geography of Spokane County, Washington {{Ghost-town-stub