Tokeland is a small spit sticking into the northern entrance of Willapa Bay.  The estuary is an amazing body of water.  Some write the bay as the second largest estuary on the Pacific Coast.  That depends upon one’s definition of an estuary.  Some include the Puget Sound in the estuary category.  While parts of the Sound are estuarine, the Sound is an inland sea.

Definition of an estuary reads a partially enclosed body of brackish water with one or more rivers flowing into and an open connection to the sea.  The freshwater-saltwater intermix provides high levels of nutrients in both water columns and sediment making an estuary a wildly productive natural habitat.  West Coast Estuary Explorer also includes the Columbia River as an estuary.  They have split the river reaches into eight separate interconnected sections, from the river mouth to the furthest point of tidal influence, Bonneville Dam.  The enormous amounts of freshwater flowing through make the Columbia a special case.

The Bay

Willapa Bay – 106,908 acres – provides an excellent example of an estuary.  While several small rivers flow into the bay, those waterways are much smaller in volume than either the Columbia or even the almost as large estuary to the north, Grays Harbor.  Like many other estuaries along the Pacific Coast, the bay represents drowned river valleys inundated by tectonic subduction and tsunami actions.  The bay is bordered on its west side by the 28-mile Long Beach Peninsula, created by sediments carried by the Columbia River drifting north over the centuries (the same sediments created the long beaches of Clatsop County to the south in Oregon).  That peninsula has widened significantly since the building of the jetties at the mouth of the Columbia River.

The bay, relatively shallow, empties into half of its size at low tide leaving large amounts of sediment exposed twice a day.  From the waters, Willapa Bay accounts for the largest supply of farmed oysters in the country, one of the largest producers in the world.

Opportunity abounds

Originally, Willapa Bay sported the name Shoalwater Bay, a name given by John Meares, a English fur trader.  The name of the bay changed to Willapa Bay around 1900.  Willapa Bay covers a vast area with much of it devoted to oyster beds.  Opportunity abounds to those who want to explore the natural setting, especially in the southern reaches of the bay in the Willapa Bay National Wildlife Reserve.  The largest island – appropriately named Long Island – remains a pristine bit of wilderness only reachable by boat.  To drive from one end of the bay – Tokeland – to the other – Long Beach – requires an hour and a half.  You still have another 28 miles to go north from Long Beach, as well.

Long Beach, Willapa Bay, cranberries, oysters, clams, salmon, all just a few of the topics one could go on about.  Here, I want to focus on the Tokeland area, however.

Tokeland, as a community

According to the US Census, the spit holds a couple hundred people.  Those living here tend to be older though the average income has many below the poverty line.  Tokeland saw few settlers in the beginning of the Washington Territory – 1853.  Of course, before European settlers arrived, the local Native Americans lived and used the bay for centuries.   They fished, gathered oysters and clams, went out into the forest bogs to pick wild cranberries.  Tokeland got its name from the Shoalwater chief of the time, Toke.

Early treaty interactions

The southern and eastern edges of the bay held peoples of the Willapa Chinook, one of five tribes of the short-lived Chinook Indian Reservation.  Further to the south, across the Columbia River, one of the Chinook tribes, the Clatsops, gained a treaty signed between them and Indian Agent Dr. Anson Dart in August 1851 giving them a small reserve of one and a half miles by three and a half miles including Point Adams – the spit on the Oregon side of the Columbia River mouth.

They wanted a reserve large enough to not have to worry about ocean erosion, a constant problem at the mouth of the river in the days before the jetties.  (This is something that comes into play with the Shoalwater Bay Reservation talked about below).  In return, the tribe ceded to the United States all lands north of Tillamook Head to the Columbia River and east to the summit of the Coast Range.  The Clatsops retained fishing rights to the little Neacoxie Bay – the estuary separating today’s communities of Seaside and Gearhart – and a right of passage along the beach to and from their reservation to the north, as well as picking up any whales cast up along the beaches. 

Also, the tribe got $15,000 made in annual payments of money and supplies – blankets, clothing, soap, salt, flour, tobacco and other items – delivered at Tansy Point each year.  Tansy Point, a logging dockyard today, lies midway between Hammond and Warrenton on the Columbia River.  The would-be reserve looks to include the present-day Carruthers Memorial Park which possibly includes an old Clatsop burial ground.

New beginnings?

This just the first of thirteen treaties with the Chinook and other tribes living in proximity to the Columbia River mouth.  The actual grounds where the treaties were signed was recently purchased by the Lower Confederated Chinook Tribes and Bands and a state grant given for $6,000 to develop and interpretive kiosk on the site.  The tribe hopes to build a plank house or gathering structure there in the future after land-use and long-term maintenance issues.

A lot of clout held by the Chinook tribes was lost through large numbers of deaths within their communities.  Many diseases had already ravaged the area at the end of the 18^th century.  Around the middle 1830’s, malaria reduced the population of the Chinooks by 50-75% again.  Plus, the land on which the Chinooks and their neighbors lived had no borders per say.  Borders were fluid with much ground being shared.

Back at Shoalwater Bay

Shoalwater Bay on the north end was populated by Lower Chehalis people, with some Chinook families included.  The north end of the bay featured a village named Naaphs Chaahts – the site of the present reservation.  That represented the southmost area for the tribe – the lands extended north to Westport and eastward up the Chehalis River to the town of Satsop, some twenty-five miles to the east.  The Lower Chehalis word for where the town of Westport is today, was ts-a-lis, or “place of sand”.  The name, pronounced “Chehalis” by early European visitors, became shared by the river emptying into Grays Harbor and the people living upriver.

The Tansy Point Treaties took place in 1851 when Washington was still a part of the Oregon Territory.  After the treaties were signed, the local Native Americans relocated to the areas allocated to them by treaty.  They lived in those areas for several years waiting in vain for the treaties for ratification in Washington, DC.  That never happened in the years leading up to the Civil War.  In fact, the Chinook never gained recognization as a nation by the politicians on the other side of the continent, at the time.

Cost of no treaty

Washington Territory got their own treaty maker in the form of Governor Isaac Stevens.  A graduate of West Point, the diminutive Stevens got busy going around his new territory trying to get Native Americans to open their lands to new European settlement.   A treaty council held in 1855 on the Chehalis River where Stevens gathered bands together including Chehalis, Chinook and Cowlitz tribes.  In agreeing to move to a reservation in Quinault lands north of Grays Harbor, their right to fish in accustomed grounds was guaranteed and the President allowed to consolidate the signing tribes with other “friendly tribes and bands”.

Not everyone went along with the deal, however.  The Shoalwater Bay natives wanted to stay where they were and not move north into unfamiliar Quinault country.  The Upper Chehalis, likewise, wanted to stay on the Chehalis River where they lived.  The Quinault did sign joined by the Quileute, Queets and Hoh tribes with the Senate ratifying that treat in 1859.   Governor Stevens hoped to renew negotiations with those not signing, but the Civil War got in the way.  Stevens died at the battle of Chantilly just after Second Manassas in 1862.   No treaty came about with either the Chehalis, Chinook or Cowlitz tribes.

Reservations without recognition

Settlers continued moving into the region.  In 1860, Michael Stevens who worked on the earlier treaties with Stevens wrote to the Superintendent of Indian Affairs. “The Upper and Lower Chehalis, the Cowlitz and Chinook Indians, numbering between seven and eight hundred, are not parties to the existing treaties, and are certainly entitled to the care of the government.  They are in the immediate neighborhood of the settlements, living in most instances on the land of white settlers.  I have selected a piece of ground adapted to their wants, and upon which I think it will be advisable to settle the Cowlitz and Upper Chehalis tribes.  The Chinooks and Lower Chehalis should be located somewhere near the seashore, as their previous habits and mode of living render such a location necessary.”

This led to the establishment of the Chehalis Reservation by the Secretary of the Interior in 1864.  In 1866, President Andrew Johnson established through executive order the Shoalwater Bay Reservation. The reserve included 335 acres of land around where their village was.  The Chinooks waited until finally gaining tribal recognition by President Bill Clinton in 2001. That recognition rescinded eighteen months later by a new administration.  (Interestingly, the Chinook Winds Casino in Lincoln City belongs to a group of tribes not related to the Chinooks but to the Siletz tribes of the central Oregon Coast.) The tribe still awaits federal recognition to be granted again. Headquarters for the tribe is across the bay in Bay Center.

Recognition late in coming

The Shoalwater Bay tribe did not gain recognization as a tribe until 1971 even though the reservation existed for over a century before that.  A tribe federally recognized by executive order instead of a signed treaty held certain problems. Washington does not recognize the right of the tribe to gather, hunt or fish on traditional territories.  This means, like any other Washingtonians, Shoalwater people must purchase permits for hunting, fishing and shellfish gathering which for commercial purposes gets quite expensive since licenses must be bought for each species.  As a result, there are no longer any commercial fishermen within the tribe. 

Many of the tribe eventually accepted 80-acre allotments on the larger Quinault Reservation though they became Quinault tribal members in the process. About 75 to 80 of about 350 enrolled members of the tribe live on the reservation at Shoalwater Bay. 

The Chehalis Reservation comprised originally 4,225 acres in size. The reserve suffered reduction by 3,754 acres in 1866.  Only 382 Chehalis people lived on the reserve in 1984.  They also waited until 1939 before they recognition given by the federal government as a tribe.

The Neighbors – a Lighthouse and Life-Saving Station

In 1855, this area of the world was very difficult to get to.  There was hope the bay could become a port but shifting sands at the large mouth of the bay made navigation always a tricky item.  There was also the question of port to where and for what.  Settlement up the Willapa River valley to the east came about slowly.  The few who came did not always stay – those forming the Aurora Colony south of Oregon City, the best-known balking at the ever-gray wet skies.

To help with navigation, a lighthouse went up in 1858 just to the west of what became the Shoalwater Reservation in an area called North Cove.  Only a year later, the light turned off due to the difficulty in supplying the keepers with food and the lantern with fuel.  Not until 1861, before the light went back on.

Eventually, a life-saving station went up in 1877 near the lighthouse.  Both the lighthouse and life-saving station fought a century battle with the elements.  Bulkheads built to protect foundations.  Planking laid down to cut down on drifting sands.  Shrubs planted to attempt to keep building dunes at bay.  Sometimes, drifts of three to four feet built up covering the boat rails for the life-saving operators.  Fences, tree and more brush mats laid out. Eventually the surf and storm surges which ended the careers of both operations.  Each year, 50 to 100 feet of Cape Shoalwater fell off into the sea. 

war comes to cape shoalwater

In 1918, a two-gun battery of 6-inch guns from Battery Freeman at Fort Stevens became mounted on pedestals installed next to the lighthouse to protect the entrance to Willapa Bay. Those guns removed to Battery Tolles-B at Fort Worden on the Puget Sound in 1932 leaving the bay unarmed until World War 2.

With another war, initially, four 75-mm guns came down next to the lighthouse in 1941 from Fort Lewis. Those guns replaced a year later by two 155-mm guns set on Panama mounts. These mounts constructed as round concrete pedestals with concrete rings surrounding the pedestals allowing the guns to rotate easier. Additionally, nearby, four simple platform mounts set down for 12-inch mortars but never installed. Those platforms sit abandoned up off Washington 105 a little to the northwest of the lighthouse. All of the guns were taken away by early 1944.

nature wins

A storm in 1940 led the Coast Guard to closing the lighthouse when the south wall of the house collapsed – a fate like that of another from that age, Umpqua Lighthouse.  Both the 1858 lighthouse and a two-gun battery platform reclaimed by seas after many years of coastal erosion created by surf and high tides from storms pounding the area, basically eliminating Cape Shoalwater.

Technically, though, the final demise of the lighthouse belongs to the Coast Guard. With the tottering condition of the house attracting the curious, the Coast Guard dynamited the structure before someone got hurt. The gun battery lies in the surf while nothing remains of the former mortar mounts.

The lighthouse replaced by a series of beacons retreating with the coastline in the succeeding years as the ocean claimed not only the lighthouse but most of the cape where it formerly stood.  The little community of North Cove has also mostly washed away. The beach known appropriately as Washaway Beach.  The present light beacon stands a mile in from the former lighthouse site.

Four Coast Guardsmen drowned in a rescue attempt during a storm in January 1946.  They went out after hearing about a missing crab boat out of Westport.  The next day, the crab boat and crew found safe in the harbor at Westport – they had not gone out but weathered the storm in the marina.  The Coast Guard 36-foot lifeboat washed up empty on the beach, however.  Three of the four crew eventually recovered from the sea, as well.

The life-saving station soldiered on for awhile, closing in 1957, before moving to a new site at the end of the Tokeland Spit.  That station house was destroyed in a storm at the end of 2007. Though, by that time, the Coast Guard already had consolidated their operations north to their Grays Harbor Station in Westport – 1977 – following the end of maintenance dredging at the mouth of the bay.

Environmental challenges

erosion

As you can see from the maps and pictures, erosion is a major problem to the Shoalwater tribe and their neighbors.  Cape Shoalwater used to protect the tidal flats around which the original Native village centered around.  The cape gone today into the sea.  The Army Corps of Engineers put up $19 million to rebuild a massive berm protecting the tidal waters extending about two thirds of the way along the Tokeland Spit.  Storms combined with very high tides – king tides – to top the Graveyard Spit Berm in parts causing loss of parts of the northwest side of the berm – area closest to Washaway Beach. 

Erosion combines with the constantly shifting sands of the wide mouth of the bay – about three miles – to make the entrance very questionable.  The Coast Guard does not like to work on the bay mouth due to danger to its own buoy tender, the USCGC Henry Blake operating out of Everett.  Buoys constantly needed to be shifted with sand conditions. The small number of boats going out over the bar make it not worth the risks to the Blake.

tsunami

Another challenge to life here along the north bay is the possibility of tsunamis.  There is plenty of geologic evidence of past tsunamis devastating the area.  The Tokeland Spit, as and the beach areas to the north towards Westport offer little in the way of high ground to escape the possibility.

With no place to run, the tribe has built with a grant from FEMA, a tsunami evacuation tower capable of holding 300 people 40 to 50 feet above the ground. The tower is in the finishing stages on the eastern border of the reservation.  It is within reach of the 80 or so tribal members plus another roughly 300 others needing to get to high ground. No one to be turned away.  A tsunami siren stands nearby.  Two other sirens stand on other parts of the spit.  One is near the marina and one at the intersection of Tokeland Road and Washington Route 105.  A magnitude 9 earthquake in the area is predicted to send an eight-to-ten-foot wall of water over the area.

The tower, built of steel, stands on concrete piling buried 40 to 50 feet deep. This allows the structure to stand up to wave action scouring.

Tokeland Hotel

At the same time the lighthouse was built, George and Charlotte Brown homesteaded 1,400 acres.  Their daughter Elizabeth and her husband William Kindred built original farmhouse. This developed into the hotel in 1885, the oldest surviving hotel structure in Washington.  Combining with other family members, more land was purchased for a golf course, oyster farm, dairy and post office. This made the hotel, which opened to the public in 1894, a bit of a local destination.

By 1902, a rail lines extended to South Bend and Nahcotta on the Long Beach Peninsula linking them with both Portland and Seattle.   Two steamers, the Shamrock and the Reliable, would then bring tourists out to Tokeland.  A storm in 1932 caused extensive damage. Added to the financial situation of the times led to a long downturn for the hotel.

In 2018, Zac Young and Heather Earnhart purchased the hotel. They moved their beloved Wandering Goose operation from Capitol Hill in Seattle to Tokeland.  Ms. Earnhart is the chef.  She hails from North Carolina and brings a touch of Southern charm to the bay.  The hotel undergoes renovation by husband Zac, a contractor. The restaurant remains the star of Pacific County – the whole Washington Pacific coast for that matter.

Say “Hi” to Gus, the big yellow lab wallowing in a big pit of his own doing outside the hotel.

Beyond the Hotel and the Reservation

Most of the Spit is dotted with homes, many retirees and many weekend getaways.  Driving down Tokeland Road (which changes to Kindred Avenue halfway down) brings you past a rocky barrage on the ocean side, hopefully, keeping the king tides at bay.  The atmosphere is quiet with conservative flags and signs noting the urban-rural divide existing in the Pacific States.  The road ends at a little marina where Nelson’s Crab sets up in a new building. They recently moved from a little way up the road.  The business boasts “since 1934”.  A large gift shop and seafood counter greets you. Dollar off on seafood cocktails from 3pm to closing – 5 pm.

From the crab shop, look right out into the bay where the old Coast Guard lifeboat station was located.

The little marina almost dries up a low tide.  The vista out over the bay is grand.  A visit to Tokeland is made even more special during times of gales. Here, the rain whips across the little spit horizontally.  The normally placid waters of the bay whipped into a froth of white.

Need to know

Tokeland is 2.5 hours from either Portland or Seattle.  There is a hotel owned by the tribe, as well as the Tokeland Hotel. Here you can also set up shop – the Tradewinds.  There are a few homes also available on Airbnb and VRBO. The Shoalwater Bay Indian Reservation may only have 80 residents, but that is still big enough for a small casino.  Across the street from the casino is a library-museum devoted to the tribe’s history and culture.

There is a lot to do around Willapa Bay. The area further north along the road to Westport is also of interest through the cranberry bogs of Grayland, too.  The old downtown of Raymond beckons, as does the art deco county courthouse in South Bend.  Lots of places to buy oysters around the bay. Goose Point is probably the most obvious being right on US 101 near Bay Center.  Long Beach Peninsula has lots more to see. Realize, however, even though you can see it from Tokeland, the peninsula is a good hour drive away.