This morning I had a note from my friend Stephanie who divides her time between Gig Harbor and Ilwaco. She said that for a while she could be reached at “Crow Cottage” – apparently the name of her place here at the beach. I love it! It must be a new appellation because she also said, “… if I say it often enough, perhaps the name will stick…”

The Wreckage, Ocean Park

Our Peninsula is full of cottages with charming names. The term “cottage,” though, is relative. In my mind (and in the online Wikipedia Dictionary) a cottage is, typically, a small house. The word comes from England where it originally was a house that has a ground floor, with a first, lower story of bedrooms which fit within the roof space. In many places the word cottage is used to mean a small old-fashioned house.

Many are the cottages on the Peninsula that are larger than some of our houses in Oysterville. Here at the beach, “cottage” was often the designation for a vacation home – perhaps smaller than the main residence in the city, but  often substantial none-the-less. Most were built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and most were given quaint names by their owners – “Sand Castle,” “Yeo-Ho,” “Yellow Bird,” “Quit-Yo-Worry,” “Beech-Eze,” or “Father’s Shan-Gri-La.”

Schulderman-Collie Cottage, Seaview

The greatest number of such cottages are in Seaview and Ocean Park. Both of those towns began as resort areas catering to the upriver population who came to the beach to escape the inland heat of summer. Seaview catered to the more affluent folks (as opposed to Tinkerville/Long Beach that rented out lots for tents) and Ocean Park catered to the members of Portland’s old Taylor Street Methodist Church.

On the other hand, Ilwaco, Oysterville and Nahcotta were blue-collar, working towns.  Most residents had only one home and usually didn’t give it a fancy name. Traditionally such houses (as opposed to the second-home cottages) have been referred to by the name of whoever lives there. Increasingly, though, as new owners come along, the name of the first occupant becomes the moniker. We began to do that in Oysterville in 1976 when we became a National Historic District.

Our house, for instance, is called the Tom Crellin House – the first owner in 1869. Never mind that he lived in it for fewer than ten years and owned it for fewer than 25, and that the H.A. Espy family has owned it ever since. The Tom Crellin House it is.

Tom Crellin House, Oysterville

And, I should clarify that the sign over our gate, tsako-te-hahsh-eetl, was never meant to name the house (although that’s what people assume.) It was put there by my grandfather as a reminder that the Chinooks were here first and that’s what they called the area where Oysterville is now. It is said to have two meanings – “Place of the Red-topped Grass” and “Place of the Yellow-Hammers” which is what the locals once called the red shafted-flickers that tap-tap-tap on trees and rooftops here.