“City Skyline” June 26, 1935
In my lifetime, I have known Oysterville to be called a “hamlet,” a “village,” and even a “town,” but never a “city.” Even if old Mr. Stoner was correct back in the 1950s when he estimated that there were 500 people in Oysterville at its zenith in the 1870s, I hardly think it could have been considered a “city.”
So I was full of curiosity recently when I ran across a copy of an old newspaper with an article headed The City of Oysterville, Comparisons With Twenty Years Ago. Unfortunately, the two Xeroxed pages do not include the masthead so I have only a vague notion as to which paper it came from or when it was written. (Why oh why do people insist on keeping news clippings without identifying their source and date? It is a constant irritant to those of us looking for historical information!)
Oysterville Stagecoach
During the thriving times of ’86-’87, when Charley Burch handled the reins for Pioneer Loomis, making daily trips from Ilwaco to Oysterville with a deadax canvas-covered wagon, a live team, a red shirt and a blue necktie, hauling hungry passengers to and fro between the then popular towns of Ilwaco and Oysterville, one did not need an appetite coaxer, as Sam Stratton “ramrod” of the Old Pacific Hotel, was a good provider. (Whew! Some sentence!)
The menu, (commencing Monday), included oysters and clams; Tuesday, clams and oysters, etc.; and commencing Saturday, “rum lamb sheep of mutton” was the principal diet which would continue until the Sunday came and oyster crop would again show up.
Pacific House in Oysterville, 1870
Oysterville in those days presented the appearance of an up-to-date terminal city. Travel was frequently suspended on account of a freak weather-bureau agent who seemed to have it in for the homeseeker, the strenuous timber buyer, the festive insurance agent and the pleasure seeker. O yes! Everything looked like “rapid transit” in those days. (And we begin to get the tongue-in-cheek idea of the article.)
The account goes on in this vein for quite a bit and talks about some of the old-timers who were still living – Wally Stuart, Jimmy Johnson, “Father” Espy. Considering those and other clues plus the rather taunting tone taken by the writer, I think the article must have been published in the South Bend Journal around 1907 or 1908. (South Bend was still lording it over Oysterville for their coup in getting the county seat away from us just 15 years previously.)
Yep! Great stuff. But what is a “deadax” wagon?
From a History of Melrose, NE at rootsweb.ancestry. com: “These wagons were referred to as dead-ax (axle) wagons by the pioneers because they had no springs.” Normally that would mean a very uncomfortable ride, but for cruising down the beach for the majority of the trip from Ilwaco to Oysterville, perhaps not so bad.