Kelso

Market town and former burgh in Scottish Borders unitary authority, Scotland, situated at the confluence of the rivers Tweed and Teviot, 68 km/42 mi southeast of Edinburgh; population (2001) 5,600. Its chief industries are iron founding, the manufacture of manures and oil cake, and agricultural support services.

A five-arched bridge, built in 1803, crosses the Tweed here, and the ruins of Kelso Abbey, founded in 1128, lie off the market square.

In 1545 the abbey's 112 inhabitants were killed during an attack by Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford (1506–52). The poet and novelist Walter Scott was a pupil at the old grammar school in 1783; he described Kelso as the most beautiful town in Scotland.

Kelso

City and administrative headquarters of Cowlitz County, southwest Washington, on the Cowlitz River near its junction with the Columbia River, 61 km/38 mi south of Centralia and immediately northeast of Longview; population (1990) 11,800. Its economy centres on fishing (smelt, steelhead, sturgeon) and fish canning. The city also packs meat and processes local agricultural and dairy products.

Used as early as the 1840s by Hudson's Bay Company traders as a shipping point, Kelso was settled in 1847. It became an important 19th-century logging, milling, and fishing town and a steamboat port.