TOLD by the PIONEERS - Washington Secretary of State

Told by the Pioneers
gather oysters off the mud flats. The "Robert Bruce" was the first
real o~'ster boa t to come into the bay, in 1855, and it came from San
.F'rancisco. This boat was destroyed by fire at Bruce Port, which is
descrihed in the "Early History" of the county.
A few years later the \Vinard Brothers came up the bay from San
FraBcisco with a schooller called "The Three Sisters" and started in
the o~'ster business. From this time on, the oyster industry grew into
quilt, a fine business and soon larger boats were built to handle the
oysters on a large scale. I have seen forty sailing boats at one time
loaded \yith oysters coming in to get them ready to load out for San
Franeisco. I have seen two and three schooners loading at one time,
each of which would carry• from four to five thousand bushels of oyS-
•
tel's. All of this area in the bay was then known as "Shoalwater Ba~',"
but was later named \Villapa Harbor, from the Willapa river, which
empties into the bay just below South Bend. This was after the saw
mill amI the fish cannery were built at South Bend. These lIew in-
••
dnstries startecl the boom in the harbor.
It was in 1890 that six" promoters" came to Oysterville, and I lwd
the honor of sailing them to South Bend in a sail boat called the "Indona,"
which was built for the late Capt. Morris Stevens. There was
one small saw mill here at this time, and these six men bought up the
land and set things in motion to build up a permanent town, eYer~'­
thing boomed, and South Bend is still here. It was not. long until the
tOWll had grown to be a quite important place, and all kinds of business
\yas started. Being located near the center of the county, the
people wanted the county seat moved there from Oysterville. Thl're
were 110 roads then, and all travel and traffic was by water and it required
two steamers and a scow to move the courthouse records and
count~- material to South Benet I helped to move them, and owing to
the bitter controvers~- over the matter, it was moved by night.
,Yhen I was born, there were only a handful of people in the county,
or territor~-, but I have lived to see wonderful developments, with numerou~
towns and thousands of people in this once almost barren re-
•
glOn.
I remember n st.ory told me, when I was a boy, of the experience of
.Joe B~·tron. Joe told me himself about his duck-hunting experience.
He said he was hunting down along the Naselle river, and he used
up all of his lead, shooting at ducks, and had killed 30 of the birds.
,Vhile coming down a small slough, he happened to look up and saw
a small bear crouched in the branches of a tree. He said he scratched
his head and thought awhile about what to do. Finally, he went over
to a spruce tret' to scrape some soft pitch to stop a leak ill his boat
34