Morning of Day Two - Oysterville

I woke up early Monday morning - around 5:30 a.m., thanks to the barking dog next door, but I guess that's to be expected when staying in a dog-friendly motel! Larry was already soaking in his eucalyptus-lavender scented tub, I started a pot of coffee, and took Duchess out for a chilly morning walk down the block. By the time 8:00 rolled around we were ready for the continental breakfast that the motel offered. It was great! Larry prepared some waffles for us both in the waffle-maker, and there was even marionberry syrup to slather over the top - yum! I grabbed a couple of apples for later in the day and we headed back to the room to get Duchess. She had been such a good girl - didn't tear up the bed or anything! We drove back to the beach and Larry and Duchess walked around while I stayed in the warm car!

We had seen an episode of Northwest Backroads a while ago in which they visited Long Beach. Larry remembered Marsh's Free Museum which they called "a shrine to the strange" and didn't want to miss it, so we were there when they opened their doors at 9 a.m.

 

There was a lot of "stuff" for sale, none of which struck my fancy. The mummified, always creepy Jake the Alligator Man is a Long Beach institution so I snapped his picture.

I have to say, we weren't too impressed with this place, so headed for Oysterville.

 The 80-acre Oysterville National Historic District has  Willapa Bay as its backdrop. Eight houses, a church, the Oysterville cannery and a one-room schoolhouse are on the National Register of Historic Places.

For generations before the settlers arrived, Chinook Indians gathered oysters in this part of Willapa Bay and camped in the area that is now Oysterville. They called it “tsako-te-hahsh-eetl” whichhad two meanings – “place of the red-topped grass” and “home of the yellowhammer,” the local name for the red-shafted flicker,

Oysterville was settled in 1854 by R.H. Espy and I. A. Clark. They had agreed on a rendezvous with Chief Nahcati who had told Espy of tidelands covered with oysters.

It was the California Gold Rush of 1849 that drew significant numbers of settlers of European descent to Oysterville. Espy and Clark marketed the bivalves in gold-rich San Francisco. There, a plate of oysters sold for a Mexican “slug” which was worth two and a half times a twenty dollar gold piece. Within a few months there were 500 settlers in Oysterville and in 1855 it became the county seat of Pacific County.

Once the county seat, with a college, two hotels and a weekly newspaper, the town began to decline when, in 1880, the long-awaited Clamshell Railroad ended at Nahcotta and native oysters began to become scarce.  finally, in 1893, the courthouse records were stolen by South Bend “raiders” Oysterville gradually became a sleepy little village where “time stood still.”

Today, the entire community is on the National Historic Register and the original one-room schoolhouse and church are still in use for community events.

The Oysterville Store & Post Office – 

The Oysterville Post Office has operated in Oysterville since 1858 and is the oldest continuously run Post Office under the same name in Washington. It has been in its present location since 1919.

Oysterville Schoolhouse – 1907
This is the third and last school in Oysterville and was used by Pacific County School District #1 until consolidation in 1957. The first school was a prefabricated building of “red wood” made in California and shipped aboard one of the oyster schooners in 1863. The booming community soon outgrew the “little red schoolhouse” and in 1874 a two-story building was built on this site, serving the community until it burned down in 1905.

The Oysterville Church – 1892
Built at a cost of $1500, the church was a gift to the Baptist denomination by R. H. Espy. No regular services have been held here since the mid-1930s. In 1980 the church was rededicated as an ecumenical house of worship. Music Vesper services conducted by ministers from various churches on the peninsula are held Sundays from mid-June through Labor Day Weekend.

R. H. Espy House – 1871
Robert Hamilton Espy, co-founder of Oysterville, built this house in 1871, shortly after he married. From 1854 until that time he had lived in a log cabin about 100 feet south and across the road. The “Red House” has remained in the Espy family for six generations.

R.H. Espy Family, 1895.  R.H. Espy co-founded the village/town of Oysterville, Washington.  He's sporting the beard. 


 Next stop - Oysterville Cemetery – 1858
Larry and I both love to wander around old cemeteries, even if we are not related to a single soul in them, so we definitely had to stop at one in Oysterville.

Begun in 1858 on land donated by F.C. Davis, the old section of the cemetery contains the graves of many pioneer families. Near the entrance is the grave of Chief Nahcati who befriended R. H. Espy and showed him the oyster beds.

 Just to the south, near the marker which reads “And the sea gave up its dead…” are the graves of unknown sailors who washed ashore nearby in the early days of Oysterville.

I'm always fascinated by the intricacy of the old gravestones - they usually tell a story. I wonder how long the sand dollars have guarded the one above.

Larry teases me by saying that when if I'm not spending time with dead people on Ancestry.com, I'm traipsing around a cemetery taking pictures! My fingers were cold, but I couldn't stop!

 A fancy gate surrounds this one.

  Some are so old the letters are no longer visible.

We left the cemetery and stopped at the Willapa National Wildlife Refuge.

  I was getting hungry, so we headed for Ocean Park to look for someplace to get lunch. The Berry Patch Diner looked promising, so I parked in front and we went inside to get something to go. We took a look at the menu - the prices were high, but we decided to get some halibut fish and chips rather than leaving and going someplace else. We took them down to the beach and were pleasantly surprised - they were delicious - worth every penny. And the seagulls had a feast on the fries that we couldn't finish.

 Larry and Duchess walked along the beach while I, once again, stayed in the warm car. This guy was very unhappy when I finally ran out of fries.

The day was still young, and Larry thought we should drive to Astoria so that he could face his fears of crossing the bridge, but first we had to check one more thing off our "to do" list - finding the world's largest frying pan!

The World's Largest Frying Pan in Long Beach is a year-long reminder of the town's annual Razor Clam Festival. It was forged in 1941 by command of the town's chamber of commerce. It stands 14 feet tall, is 9 feet 6 inches wide, and despite its name and impressive size it is not the World's Largest, having been surpassed in subsequent years by other towns with more ambitious plans and pans.
No longer operational, Long Beach's frying pan serves as a nice photo backdrop for families who couldn't get a decent picture in front of the Alligator Man across the street at Marsh's Free Museum.
- See more at: http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2972#sthash.6W6Ks6oY.dpuf

The World's Largest Frying Pan in Long Beach is a year-long reminder of the town's annual Razor Clam Festival. It was forged in 1941 by command of the town's chamber of commerce. It stands 14 feet tall, is 9 feet 6 inches wide, and despite its name and impressive size it is not the World's Largest, having been surpassed in subsequent years by other towns with more ambitious plans and pans.
No longer operational, Long Beach's frying pan serves as a nice photo backdrop for families who couldn't get a decent picture in front of the Alligator Man across the street at Marsh's Free Museum.
- See more at: http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2972#sthash.6W6Ks6oY.dpuf

It  is actually a fiberglass recreation of the original cast iron behemoth that was used in the town’s Clam Festival in 1941. As part of its initial display at the festival, a woman strapped bacon to her feet and hopped inside the pan carrying a giant spatula. After the clam celebration, the oversized oddity traveled around the West Coast, but Long Beach had a replica built to forever remember their part in its creation. The surface of the pan is over nine feet across and the tip of the handle is almost 15 feet off the ground. Glad to get that out of the way!

Next post - the Astoria-Megler Bridge!

The World's Largest Frying Pan in Long Beach is a year-long reminder of the town's annual Razor Clam Festival. It was forged in 1941 by command of the town's chamber of commerce. It stands 14 feet tall, is 9 feet 6 inches wide, and despite its name and impressive size it is not the World's Largest, having been surpassed in subsequent years by other towns with more ambitious plans and pans.
No longer operational, Long Beach's frying pan serves as a nice photo backdrop for families who couldn't get a decent picture in front of the Alligator Man across the street at Marsh's Free Museum.
- See more at: http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2972#sthash.Rrso6X8K.dpuf

The World's Largest Frying Pan in Long Beach is a year-long reminder of the town's annual Razor Clam Festival. It was forged in 1941 by command of the town's chamber of commerce. It stands 14 feet tall, is 9 feet 6 inches wide, and despite its name and impressive size it is not the World's Largest, having been surpassed in subsequent years by other towns with more ambitious plans and pans.
No longer operational, Long Beach's frying pan serves as a nice photo backdrop for families who couldn't get a decent picture in front of the Alligator Man across the street at Marsh's Free Museum.
- See more at: http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2972#sthash.6W6Ks6oY.dpuf