Boom Town

Where it swelled near the confluence with the Willapa River, Wilson Creek bore incongruous signs of heavy industry: breastworks of peeled cedar along the banks, crumbling now and wrenched apart by ramming drift, and a few pilings left standing midriver, where log booms once floated.

Here in the 1850s, Daniel Wilson built the area's first mill, to rip the logs that ox teams skidded off the surrounding hills. It would have had a sash saw – essentially, a giant handsaw, pumped back and forth by a cranky steam engine that chugged so slowly the sawyer could almost fish the river between passes. The planks it wore off this way were stacked on scows tied along the breastworks, to be taken first to Raymond and South Bend, and then the ports of the world. Soon steamers were stopping here as well, and the busy town of Willapa sprang into being, complete with shops and hotels.

It all happened in weeks, and a few years later, when all the trees were gone, it unhappened just as fast.

What remained – a sleepy village and a small primary school – is now called Old Willapa.


(From an earlier draught of my book, 100 Days on the Mountain. Photo of the Willapa country courtesy of Tony Webster and Wikimedia Commons.)