I’d rather be lost on Stackpole Road.

Yesterday, while Nyel was mostly flat on his back and I was mostly flat on my backside, he mostly dozed and I mostly wrote.  But in the wakeful moments, we talked a bit about that Sunday drive we took a few days back.  And about getting ‘sorta lost’ in the northern wilderness of Ocean Park.

“Weren’t we on Stackpole Road for a while?” I asked.  “You know, that other, fake Stackpole Road?  The one that dead-ends and then starts again for real across from Bud Goulter’s place on Oysterville Road?”

“Yep,” said the man of few words.

It’s one of the many strange things about the roads on the Peninsula.  As every Oysterville schoolboy used to know, Stackpole Road was named after Isaac Clark’s, boat, the Dr Stackpole.  (If anyone knows who Dr. Stackpole was, do tell!)

Isaac Alonzo Clark, co-founder of Oysterville with R.H. Espy, platted the bayside village and became its first storekeeper.  He was also an oysterman but, according to his cohorts, a rather timid boatman.  When a storm was brewing out on the bay, he often put in at a protected cove near Leadbetter Point.  As the other plungers headed homeward they would see Clark’s boat, Dr. Stackpole, hunkered down for the duration.  The cove is still called “Stackpole Harbor.” Presumably, the name for the road evolved from that.

Isaac Alonzo Clark

At first, the road was just a sandy cart track that led to the north end of the Peninsula.  Even when I was a girl, we locals just called it “the road to the Point.”  Since it seemed to begin at Oysterville Road, it never occurred to me that there might be another piece of it in Ocean Park – nearly five miles to the south.  The only connection to Stackpole Harbor that I can think of is that Isaac Clark also platted much of Ocean Park for the Methodist Episcopal Church of Portland. (They say he got tired of the boom-town, party! party! party! atmosphere here in Oysterville.

I don’t know whether there are still other pieces of Stackpole Road.  When we were ‘sorta lost’ out there in the denizens of Ocean Park, I wished we had kept one of those spiffy maps of the Peninsula that we used to sell at the Bookvendor.  (I think they were made by a man named Love who worked upstairs for David Jensen.)  When I have time, maybe I’ll look at map sifter online.  Meanwhile, as interesting as all this is for passing the time at the hospital… I think I’d rather be out there lost on Stackpole Road again!

2 Responses to “I’d rather be lost on Stackpole Road.”

  1. R D says:

    What about the note “Sherwood Forest near by”? Any idea what that is in reference to?

Leave a Reply