November Happenings in History
A look back at the rations sailors survived on while at sea.
Much has been written about Puget Sound’s “Mosquito Fleet,” a collection of privately owned steamboats of various sizes that hauled passengers and freight throughout the Sound, including Lake Washington and various rivers. This activity was widespread from the mid-1800s until the 1930s.
Columbia River salmon was sold around the world, from the eastern United States to Great Britain, Australia, India and parts of Africa. Each place had its own unique consumer base, so the canneries had to personalize their labels based on their customers’ locale. Sometimes the labels weren’t…
On March 11, 2011, the nation of Japan was shaken by a 9.1 magnitude earthquake. Centered 231 miles northeast of Tokyo, the quake — the largest ever recorded in Japan — caused a tsunami with 30-foot waves that devastated the Sendai region and damaged several nuclear reactors in the area. Ten…
LONG BEACH — It took a while for Peter Young to write his first novel.
RAYMOND — The wagons are rolling.
Author’s Note: In 2000, several years after retiring from a long medical career, Dr. John Campiche (1920-2005) wrote a series of articles for this newspaper about the development of hospitals on the Long Beach Peninsula. I have drawn liberally from those accounts for this final story about D…
Though the establishment of hospitals was a huge step in the modernization of patient care, it would be some years before diagnostic and treatment techniques caught up. In the meantime, tried-and-true home remedies often proved reliable and effective. Stephen Overstreet, who grew up in Ilwac…
Mary Ann Fuller (Markham) went to work at the Ilwaco Hospital on January 5, 1940. Her pay was $55 a month and board. Except for a brief stay nursing her aunt in Seattle, it was her first job after completing her nurses’ training at St. Luke’s Hospital in South Dakota. “I loved it,” she told …
KNAPPTON — A scene from our area’s most famous early 1800s expedition came alive in Knappton Cove earlier this month.
The historic record with respect to doctoring on the Peninsula during the Great Depression and Pre-World War II years speaks highly about Dr. David Strang and his efforts to get a hospital started on the Peninsula. However, the other Ilwaco-based doctor who came about the same time as Dr. St…
A reference from the University of Washington Atmospheric Sciences department on the subject of northwest windstorms includes a story suggesting what North Head Lighthouse once withstood.
Between 1855 and 1895 — in just one generation — the federal government built six lighthouses around the approaches to the Columbia River: Cape Disappointment (1856); Shoalwater (later Willapa) Bay (1858); Point Adams (1875); Tillamook Rock (1881); Cape Meares (1889); and the Columbia River …
OYSTERVILLE — Sydney Stevens is skeptical about ghosts.
There have been six different lighthouses (or lightships) that lit the Columbia River and North Pacific Ocean in the North Coast’s history. Some of them are still around, while for others we can only see the remnants of what they left behind.
The earliest hospital in the Lower Columbia region was begun in 1880 when the Sisters of Providence founded St. Mary’s Hospital in Astoria. It was the first and only hospital in the region until the early 1900s.
Among other things, getting to the hospital from many points in Pacific County during the first third of the 20th century was not an easy task — as this 1912 news article makes clear.
My mother’s older brother, Edwin, was not yet seven when he had one of those “boys will be boys” accidents that caused my grandparents a bit of a fright and, as I remember, was told to us of the next generation as a “cautionary tale.”
A look back at the rations sailors survived on while at sea.
Much has been written about Puget Sound’s “Mosquito Fleet,” a collection of privately owned steamboats of various sizes that hauled passengers and freight throughout the Sound, including Lake …
Columbia River salmon was sold around the world, from the eastern United States to Great Britain, Australia, India and parts of Africa. Each place had its own unique consumer base, so the cann…
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On March 11, 2011, the nation of Japan was shaken by a 9.1 magnitude earthquake. Centered 231 miles northeast of Tokyo, the quake — the largest ever recorded in Japan — caused a tsunami with 3…
top story
LONG BEACH — It took a while for Peter Young to write his first novel.
RAYMOND — The wagons are rolling.
Author’s Note: In 2000, several years after retiring from a long medical career, Dr. John Campiche (1920-2005) wrote a series of articles for this newspaper about the development of hospitals …
Though the establishment of hospitals was a huge step in the modernization of patient care, it would be some years before diagnostic and treatment techniques caught up. In the meantime, tried-…
Mary Ann Fuller (Markham) went to work at the Ilwaco Hospital on January 5, 1940. Her pay was $55 a month and board. Except for a brief stay nursing her aunt in Seattle, it was her first job a…
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KNAPPTON — A scene from our area’s most famous early 1800s expedition came alive in Knappton Cove earlier this month.
The historic record with respect to doctoring on the Peninsula during the Great Depression and Pre-World War II years speaks highly about Dr. David Strang and his efforts to get a hospital sta…
A reference from the University of Washington Atmospheric Sciences department on the subject of northwest windstorms includes a story suggesting what North Head Lighthouse once withstood.
Between 1855 and 1895 — in just one generation — the federal government built six lighthouses around the approaches to the Columbia River: Cape Disappointment (1856); Shoalwater (later Willapa…
OYSTERVILLE — Sydney Stevens is skeptical about ghosts.
There have been six different lighthouses (or lightships) that lit the Columbia River and North Pacific Ocean in the North Coast’s history. Some of them are still around, while for others we c…
The earliest hospital in the Lower Columbia region was begun in 1880 when the Sisters of Providence founded St. Mary’s Hospital in Astoria. It was the first and only hospital in the region unt…
Among other things, getting to the hospital from many points in Pacific County during the first third of the 20th century was not an easy task — as this 1912 news article makes clear.
My mother’s older brother, Edwin, was not yet seven when he had one of those “boys will be boys” accidents that caused my grandparents a bit of a fright and, as I remember, was told to us of t…
By the beginning of the 20th century, the first hospitals opened in Pacific County, putting our isolated, rural area right in line with most of the rest of the country. In addition, several of…
By the end of 1891, with the deadly wreck of the British ship Strathblane still vivid in local minds, the U.S. Life-Saving Service had manned the new station at Klipsan Beach, close by the sit…
Whaling took place all over the world but the North Coast has a little-known history of being home to one of the last commercial whaling enterprises in the U.S.
These days, the rotting pilings that sit in the middle of the Columbia River don’t seem like much at first glance but they are the remnants of a booming cannery industry.
Dr. Theodore H. Parks was born in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1842 and came to Ilwaco by way of Salem and Portland, Oregon in 1889.
In a nationwide compilation in the 1880 U.S. Census, 555 names identify their occupations as clairvoyant, spirit medium, psychometrist, trance lecturer, magnetic healer among other “pseudo-sci…
Tommy and Irene Garretson Nelson lived just south of the Oysterville Church when I was a youngster. They were about the age of my grandparents and I remember being quite fond of Tommy but just…
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In 1855, when John Douglas heard that a doctor had arrived in Bruceport, he lost no time in crossing Shoalwater Bay from his place south of Oysterville “to make arrangements.” Perhaps he paddl…
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In the last four decades, as I’ve driven through Klipsan Beach, I’ve enjoyed the pine forest that borders the highway: it feels like it’s always been there. But then I remember a friend saying…
About those horses …
There was a certain feeling of disinterment about my journey: the cemetery I was seeking, is itself buried.
Michael O. Perry was asked to write about the Lewis and Clark Expedition during the Corp of Discovery’s bicentennial celebration. At the time, his writing consisted of an occasional letter to …
From 1892 to 1979, five different lightships guided vessels to the mouth of the Columbia River. These “floating lighthouses” served as a navigational aid for ships where it wasn’t practical to…
The house of my grandparents in Oysterville was filled with books — and not only in the room they called “The Library,” either. It’s hard to tell which were the most important. Perhaps the poe…
My Great Aunt Dora and her brother Harry (my grandfather, Papa) were the family storytellers of their generation. Papa told the good-news stories; Aunt Dora was the keeper of tales about sinne…
The following 8th grade exit exam materials for Washington State in 1910 were supplied by the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, Olympia, Washington, with the following instructio…
No matter the school district or the teacher or the time of year — story after story told by school students in the early 20th century concerned their problems with a cantankerous bull.
By the time we’ve matured enough to reach the age of reason, most of us have forgotten the details of our journey. How, exactly, did we learn to read? Or to add and subtract? Or to spell, even…
It’s a project we’re thinking of calling something like “Life on the Wild Side: Ultimate Dispatch Reports.”
From the earliest days of maritime tattooing, sailors have covered themselves in images that symbolize their lives at sea. Designs represent faraway loved ones, everyday duties, personal trium…
There sure were some colorful characters in the Deep River area when I was a kid. At that time, being a man generally meant working hard (mainly in the woods) and then playing hard. I think a …
The first school in Pacific County was built by Alexander Holman in 1853 for use by his own children and for the children of neighbors James Johnsons and John Meldrum.
This list of rules for 19th century teachers appeared at the end of “Pioneer Schools of the Naselle-Gray’s River Valley” by Louise Holm Hunter, published in a 1993 Sou’wester magazine. There i…
Cecelia “Janey” Haguet was born in 1848 on her parents’ Donation Land Claim near present-day Ilwaco. She was educated at Providence Academy in Vancouver, Washington, and before she married was…
Ask almost anyone about their memories of school and you are bound to hear about at least one teacher who made a difference — usually for good, but sometimes for another reason. And certainly,…
So far, all of the recollections I have written down have been about life in the Deep River area. This one involves a short period in my childhood that I spent in Fallon, Nevada. This is one o…
For as long as I can remember, Walter Davis came over to my grandmother’s house every Sunday. They played rummy, talked in Finnish and had coffee and pastry. Every Sunday was the same routine.…
Did you ever turn off the Astoria-Megler bridge and head east on State Route 401 toward Naselle, skirting the river… and in a forest wilderness, suddenly have your heart broken by a vast range…
The crew are mustered in the waist [aft of the mainmast] and the captain in on the poop [aftermost deck] when a cry comes from somewhere forward:
In 1940, Arthur E. Skidmore wrote about the old South Bend School which was built in 1871. He went there as a student and, later, taught at the school, himself. His stories about how he manage…
Catherine “Kay” McGowan Garvin (1911-2010) grew up in the town which had the same name as she did — a circumstance she didn’t much like as a child. But, at least, she once confided, she was sp…
Verna Smith Oller was born Feb. 25, 1912, and was 95 years young when she and I talked about her growing up years on the Peninsula.
During my sophomore year at Naselle High School, I thought I would become a pole vaulter. I placed nails every six inches or so from 6 foot on up on two poles I cut out in the woods. These wer…
Line-crossing ceremonies are a centuries-old tradition in the maritime world. Some people say the earliest line-crossing ceremonies date back to the age of the Vikings, while others believe mo…
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