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Kalama (kə-LAM-mə) is a city in Cowlitz County, Washington, United States. It is part of the Longview, Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 2,959 as of the 2020 census. == Etymology == James W. Phillips' Washington State Place Names states, "General John W. Sprague of the Northern Pacific Railroad named the town in 1871 for the Indian word calama, meaning "pretty maiden." There is an additional story: The name "Kalama" was first mentioned in 1806 in the Lewis and Clark Journals ("Cath la haws Creek", "CalamsRiver", and "Calamas") in their reference to what is now known as the Kalama River (this story predates all of the others). Gabriel Franchère, in 1811, wrote of the Indian village at the mouth of the Kalama River, adding that it was called "Thlakalamah" . == History == Kalama was first settled by Native Americans, particularly members of the Cowlitz Indian Tribes. Others maintain that the town name is associated with John Kalama (c. 1814 – c. 1870), a carpenter from the Hawaiian island of Maui who came to the Pacific Northwest on a fur-trading vessel in the 1830s. (The name "Kalama" also originates in the Hawaiian language and means "tree of ebony" or "the torch") John Kalama married a Nisqually tribe woman, Mary Martin, and worked on a farm repairing fish barrels, among other jobs. Mary died early and John remarried; he had a daughter about whom little is known and a son called Peter (1864–1947). The first white settler recorded was in 1853.