Monitor is a small unincorporated community in Chelan County, Washington, set along the Wenatchee River about eight miles upstream from the river's junction with the Columbia River, in the fertile Wenatchee Valley. It lies roughly six-and-a-half miles northwest of Wenatchee, between Wenatchee and Cashmere along Highway 2, with the Cascade Range foothills rising around the valley. The community's roots are agricultural. The Captain Stoffel Waterwheel, built on the Wenatchee River in 1897 to irrigate an 80-acre homestead of fruit trees and livestock, stands as an early symbol of the orchard economy that came to define the valley. By the 1910s, Monitor supported a Wenatchee Produce Company warehouse near the railroad tracks and a lumber operation, and orchards soon dominated the sandy valley floor. Today apple and pear orchards still surround the community, and Monitor retains a quiet, rural character. A small local school was eventually consolidated with the Cashmere School District. Wenatchee River County Park, located in Monitor along Highway 2, provides riverside camping, picnicking, and access to the water. The community's position between Cashmere and Wenatchee places residents within a short drive of both towns' services. Whitewater rafting and tubing on the Wenatchee River, nearby hiking and mountain biking trails, and the apple and cider culture of the valley give Monitor a strong outdoor and agricultural identity. The community takes its name from a townsite platted in the valley, and its development followed the fruit industry that made the Wenatchee Valley a nationally known apple-growing region. Highway 2 carries traffic between Wenatchee, Cashmere, and Leavenworth, while the railroad line along the river recalls the era when fruit was shipped from valley warehouses. Today Monitor remains unincorporated, with no municipal government of its own, and its residents share the services, schools, and economy of the larger valley towns.