The city spreads north-south over the sandy flats of the Snake River. Hemming it in on both the east and the west are steep, treeless bluffs, beyond which stretches a rolling plateau. Early in the spring, the bare branches of the trees and vines glow red-brown with the renewed flow of the sap. In April, the orchards are a riot of delicately pink and white blossoms, and gardens and vineyards make geometric patterns of green against the well-cultivated earth. Harvest season is equally beautiful—red, yellow, and purple grapes load the vines, apples and pears bend the branches of the trees, and melons ripen in the fields. All this produce, as well as the grain and stock of the plateau regions, found a natural outlet through Clarkston, which served as the shipping and processing center. Among its industrial units were meat-packing plants, canneries, box factories, and flour and feed plants.

The early settlers found nothing to attract them to Jawbone Flats, as they called the barren basin that is now Clarkston. In 1863 William Craig, trader and trapper among the Nez Perce, and colonel in the forces that fought the Native Americans in 1855, established a small ferry at this point and for many years furnished transportation to the thousands of prospectors rushing to the gold fields of the Salmon River and the Clearwater districts. Lewiston sprang up on the east side of the stream, but Jawbone Flats remained a range for the horses of John Greenfield.

The beginning of Clarkston dates from 1896, when the Lewiston Water and Power Company, with the backing of eastern capital, platted a town and called it Vineland. The next year a bridge was constructed across the river at this point, and soon traffic, which had been handled by the small ferries at various river points, was focused at Vineland, renamed Concord. The town boomed and land sold for as much as $1,000 an acre. By popular petition in 1900, the town officially became Clarkston, to honor Capt. William Clark of the 1804–1806 Lewis & Clark Expedition.