Told by the Pioneers - Washington Secretary of State

Told
by the Pioneers
With the coming of the white men to Oyster Bay, the methods of
taking the oysters changed. The white oystermen placed floats out
over the beds and when the tide was out, they raked and forked the
oysters onto the float and floated it to the beach. Among the oysters
there would be one large one to fifty small oysters, also mussels. The
white men took only the best of the big oysters and dumped the rest
on the beach, destroying thousands of bushels of young oysters. The
price when delivered in Olympia was from seventy-five cents to a dollar
for a two bushel sack that now must fetch twenty dollars. Later
on, the oysterman got transportation for the oysters to Olympia instead
of bringing them by row boat. A. J. Burr, formerly a postmaster
at Olympia, had constructed the Old Settler. This was a big scow,
flat-bottomed, with a donkey engine for power, and geared to run
with an up and down motion. The engine was attached to paddle
wheels. On the first trip to Oyster Bay, aside from breaking down
several times, the Old Settler arrived there and created more excitement
than the Great Eastern did on the Atlantic coast. The fuel was
whatever could be found along the beach, and many an Indian carefully
piled and stored "rood along the beach, for the winter, which went
up the Old Settler's flues. Being flat-bottomed, the boat could be run
ashore almost any place, and the engineer, Vic, longshored the wood,
while the captain scanned the shores for an Indian war party. The
Olympia harbor, in those days, aside from two small channels, was a
mud flat for miles when the tide was out, but Captain Burr never had
to worry, as the Old Settler could paddle along the flats like running
on water. On one trip, it is related, the engineer had oiled the engine
and also himself, with oil from the Kiuse saloon. The water pump had
stopped working and no water in the boiler. The befuddled engineer
yelled to Captain Burr and then jumped overboard. The captain was
the last to leave, and followed in a hurry. As they were near Olympia
and the tide was out, they landed in two feet of soft mud. The Old
Settler did not blow up, but continued on until it struck a pile. The
captain and crew were rescued by an Indian.
Later in the oyster business, the young oysters and culls were restored
to the beds after being separated from the marketable oysters.
Captain Doane opened an oyster house in Olympia and made the fame
of the Olympia oysters world wide, by his famous pan roasts and
stews.
Game In Mason County
As we hunted the cougar, bear and wild cat, fisher, deer and other
game during all our spare time, we learned quite a lot about these
animals. In the autumn, when the dog salmon were running up Ken-
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