Originally built as the MV Stockton in San Francisco for Southern Pacific Railroad, she started out serving Southern Pacific Railways on their Golden Gate Ferries line on San Francisco Bay. She was purchased by the Puget Sound Navigation Company in 1940, moved to Puget Sound, and renamed the MV Klickitat. PSN operated her until Washington State Ferries acquired and took over operations in 1951.[1]
In 1978 Klickitat was used for exterior shots in the Emergency! TV movie "Most Deadly Passage", a story about this ferry catching fire while at sea due to gasoline, instead of diesel, being put into one of the ship's fuel tanks. It was being used on the Seattle-Bremerton route in the episode.
She was serving on the Keystone-Port Townsend crossing in November 2007 when the entire Steel Electric class was withdrawn from service due to hull corrosion issues.
In August 2009 the Klickitat and the other three Steel Electric ferries were sold to Eco Planet Recycling, Inc. of Chula Vista, California. All four ferries were scrapped in Ensenada, Mexico in the fall of 2009. One of the original 1927 wheelhouses (removed in the 1981 rebuild) of the Klickitat was salvaged and converted into a small house currently located just outside Arlington, Washington.