- J.A. Morehead House, Nahcotta 1895
Many men have founded towns and many have had towns named after them, but not so many buy one ready-made. John Morehead did in 1901. The big event was reported in the January 4, 1901 issue of The South Bend Journal:
SEALAND SOLD
J.A. Morehead Now Owns the Town
And Hotel Morrison
The End of a Townsite Rivalry
J. A. Morehead of Nahcotta is in the city and this morning is understood to have closed a deal with C. C. Dalton, as attorney for B. A. Seaborg, whereby the Morrison hotel building and practically all of the Sealand townsite becomes the property of Mr. Morehead. This deal definitely ends the old rivalry between the townsites of Nahcotta and Sealand which in boom times was decidedly sultry but of late has cooled off, Mr. Loomis having had control of Nahcotta property and Mr. Seaborg of the Sealand property.
Morehead had come to Pacific County to work for L.A. Loomis on the stage line and from 1882 until 1885 drove the stage between Ilwaco and Oysterville. His graphic account of “handling the ribbons” on the weather beach is a well-known part of peninsula lore.
In 1885, the year he married Lizzie Brown, John entered the store business in Oysterville. Four years later, when the narrow gauge railroad established its northern terminus in Nahcotta, Morehead moved his store business there. Several moves, several generations, and several owners later it became Jack’s Country Store in Ocean Park.
Morehead served as Pacific County Commissioner for fourteen years, including 1893 when the courthouse in Oysterville was ‘stolen’ by South Bend Raiders. His description of the event is another of his colorful accounts which has been told many times over. He bought Sealand – the rival town to Nahcotta. (Nahcotta was on the south side of the railroad tracks; Sealand on the north.)
Part of Morehead’s purchase became Morehead Park (now gone), part became Camp Morehead, and part became the right-of-way for the Port of Peninsula which he donated “for the good of the public forever.”
I like the name Sealand. Why did they change it? And you just don’t hear towns called “sultry” very often! Where was the M & M? I barely remeber going there with my cousin when we visited some of her father’s relatives in Ocean Park.
Sealand’s name was not changed. The town just “disappeared” as John Morehead built his campground and park and did other things with the property. As I noted in my blog, there were two rival towns — Nahcotta to the south of the tracks and Sealand to the north. Most of the land where Nahcotta is was owned by John Peter Paul. The property in Sealand was owned by a Mr. Seaborg who was actually on the Board of Directors of Loomis’s narrow-gauge RR but was eager to compete with Loomis in the transportation business. When John Peter Paul donated (or sold for a song) his property to Loomis, Seaborg could no longer hope that the RR terminus etc. would be in Sealand, so he sold out to Morehead and Nahcotta continued to grow. In 1915 the town burned to the ground and never really recovered from that. When the RR stopped in 1930, that pretty much ended Nahcotta as a commercial center — except for the port and the canneries, of course.