Many years before Chiloquin became a town, it was a campsite for a group of Klamath Indians. Before the Treaty of 1864, which officially named them the "Klamaths", people of the E' ukskni, Plaikni and Mo' dokni tribes referred to themselves as Maqlaqs. The name of the town came from an old war chief, Chief Chay-lo-quin, but became known as Chiloquin since some people found the original name difficult to pronounce.

Progress began in the Chiloquin area when the first explorers came through the country. In 1826, Peter Skeen Ogden and his party of trappers traded with the Indians securing foodstuffs to keep them alive until spring. They camped near the present site of Collier Park.

When the railroad was built north from Klamath Falls to the terminal point in Kirk in 1910, Chiloquin was nothing more than a few shacks and tents scattered over a wide field at the confluence of the Sprague and Williamson Rivers. The Chiloquin Mercantile and the Chiloquin Warehouse were the pioneer businesses in the town. The first movies were shown in the warehouse, where the audience sat on bales of hay and the picture machine was powered by the automobile engine of the itinerant movie operator. The first post office was established in 1912 with Mary A. Whittemore as postmistress.

Klamath Echoes, Aug. 20, 1912: "Chiloquin,s new $5,000 depot was opened. Twice daily trains will run between Chiloquin and Klamath Falls."

Klamath Echoes #16, Aug. 5, 1915: "Forty trains per day pass through Kirk (North of Chiloquin). Six railroad companies are operating out of Kirk. Daily shipments of around a million and a half board feet of logs are made over Southern Pacific Railroad to Klamath Falls and it's mills."

During the daily round trip of the train from Klamath to Kirk through Chiloquin, the engineer stopped the train along Klamath Lake to pick up fisherman. One day the train waited while a fisherman continued to net the last fish for his bag limit.

Since Chiloquin was located in the center of the Klamath Indian Reservation, white men had to purchase Indian allotments to obtain land. The first allotments on the site were sold in 1918. In the early 1920s, Henry Stowbridge, L.B. Robinson and Mary C. Jackson plotted the part of the town east of the Williamson River, on land that was known as the "Juda Jim Allotment". The west side was developed by R.C. and Alice Spink. Chiloquin was a boomtown known as "Little Chicago of the West" where the keeping of law and order was one of the main problems. The populace was made up of loggers, mill workers, ranchers and Indians.

A one-room school took care of the educational needs of the Chiloquin youngsters until the school year of 1918- 1919, when two teachers were used, rather than one. In the 1920s, Chiloquin's elementary and high school districts were formed. In the mid 1920s, construction began on a brick and stucco structure, which was finished in 1926 and housed the elementary and high school students. The last two years of high school were offered locally for the first time!

Between May of 1923 and the summer of 1929, a building boom hit Chiloquin. A.C. Gienger and his son Roy constructed the first brick business, a two story building located on the site of their earlier wooden building, which they moved a block south. The brick building housed three or four stores on the first floor and apartments on the second floor. Henry Wolff, who, with his wife Josephine, had begun a successful bakery in the town the year before, built a brick building on the opposite side of the street from Gienger and moved in during the July 4th celebration in 1926. Three more blocks of brick buildings were completed during this era and ended with the Markwardt Bros. Garage, which opened in the summer of 1929. Gienger had begun a water works company early in 1924, which was later sold to the City of Chiloquin after incorporation on March 9, 1926. A.C. Gienger, who had worked hard for the city government, was elected its first mayor. None of the members of the council or of the city administration, responsible for drafting the laws of the new city, had ever been connected with municipal work before.

At that time in the area, there were 2,000 inhabitants, 3 big lumber mills, box factories, restaurants, barber shops, grocery stores, drug stores, doctors, dentists, lawyers, pool halls, dance and card rooms. Chiloquin was the trade area for the entire northern part of Klamath County and served Fort Klamath and the Klamath Agency as a mail and freight distribution point. Chiloquin was also the shipping point for the vast Indian reservation and for a great expanse of country east of town along the Sprague River. Few small towns in any state could boast of handling the volume of business that daily went on in this bustling little community of so rich a land!

Edward M. Miller, Automobile Editor of the Portland Oregonian May 3, 1931: "Having completed my pleasant duties at Crater Lake, I stepped on the throttle of J.K. Leander's free-wheeling Studebaker sedan and in less than an hour, found myself on the Williamson River Bridge in Chiloquin. The Williamson River bisects the city and joins the Sprague River a quarter mile below the city. Into this valley, provided by the two rivers, the town of Chiloquin has arisen in the last five years. A brand new city, nurtured by sawmills, lumber camps, railroads, Indians, sheep and cattle.

Surroundings are handsome. Creeping into the city from the east and the west is a pine forest. The trees on the east rise high on a range of brown hills. On the western horizon are the peaks of the Cascade Range, snow-capped in winter and spring."

Portland Oregonian May 3, 1931: "Chiloquin stands as one of the few communities in the United States without a luncheon club. The town makes no apologies and explains that businessmen can't afford to take off for lunch" and "Chiloquin is the largest livestock shipping point on the Southern Pacific lines in Oregon; 6,000 head of cattle going out every fall and coming in every spring."

Beginning around 1910, the lumber industry in Klamath County experienced rapid growth, and lumber products became the lifeline of the Chiloquin area. In 1916, Wilbur Knapp built a small circular sawmill on the Williamson River, one mile north of Chiloquin. In 1924, the mill was sold to the Forest Lumber Company from Kansas City, Missouri, who changed the name to Pine Ridge Klamath County Oregon Division. In 1939, a fire burned the entire plant, and it was not rebuilt.

John Bedford and Harold Crane built the Sprague River Lumber Company on the Sprague River, 3 miles east of Chiloquin in 1919. The mill was sold to William Bray in 1921 and became the Braymill White Pine Company prior to closing in 1928 after the stock market collapse. Bray let some of the crew that had worked in the mill at the time of the shutdown live in the company houses during the depression.

In 1918, E.A. Blocklinger and his son, Arthur, organized the Chiloquin Lumber Company and Box Company on the Sprague River at Chiloquin. The box factory burned in 1947. The mill subsequently became The Chiloquin Mill, owned by the Salvage Brothers of Cave Junction, Oregon. It was purchased by Ernest DeVoe and J.R. Simplot in 1955. In 1962, DeVoe sold his interest to J.R. Simplot, who operated the mill under the name of the Simplot Lumber Company until it was sold to the DiGorgio Corporation in June of 1969. The plant then operated under the name of Klamath Lumber Company, a subsidiary of the Klamath Lumber Mill in Klamath Falls, until the name was changed to D.G. Shelter Products. In June of 1977, the plant was sold to a group in Bend, Oregon, and was renamed Chiloquin Forest Products. The plant was closed in 1988.

The closures of the lumber mills in Chiloquin, the depression and a series of disastrous fires had a major effect on the town. The population of the incorporated portion of Chiloquin is now approximately 750 people; this does not, of course, include the many residents who live within the Chiloquin mailing area but outside of the city limits, which is where the greatest growth is now being experienced.