In 1853-54 there were two hundred men on Shoalwater Bay and its estuaries who lived by oystering, and these natural beds furnished all the fresh oysters consumed on the coast until 1859, when planting was begun. An unusual frost in 1861-62 destro}*ed nearly all the oysters in the bay; but in 1874 one hundred and twenty thousand baskets were shipped from here. The oystermen of Shoalwater Bay and Puget Sound inlets have to contend with the imported eastern mollusk since the opening of transcontinental railroads, but the small native oyster remains a favorite for its delicacy of flavor.
From what I have said it will appear that this part of the Washington coast, although deserving well of the outside world, received little attention from it for many years, the rich valley surrounding it being sparsely settled, and even the wealth of its forests remaining almost untouched.
The entrance to Shoalwater Bay is thirty-five miles north of -the Columbia Biver entrance, although its south end reaches to within four miles of that great river. This thirty miles of water—actually shoal—south of the entrance is what gives the bay its name, and it is separated from the ocean by a long spit of an average width of two miles. Inside the bay are no mudflats such as are seen in Gray's Harbor, but the channel is more tortuous.
The north headland of the bay, called Toke Point, after a Chinook chief who had his home here, is a jutting headland reaching out into the harbor for a distance of seven miles in a curving neck which protects a small bay called North Cove. From this cove the harbor extends eight miles east to the mouth of the Willapa (pronounced with a broad a, and accent on the second syllable) and up this estuary for some distance to a point twenty miles inside the bar. The mean depth of water on the bar is said to be over twenty-six feet, while inside and all the way to the head of deep water in the Willapa the channel carries from thirty-five to sixty feet. The harbor is perfectly landlocked and safe from the sou'westers which blow in the winter months.
Twenty miles from the ocean, on the south bank of the Willapa Biver, and three miles from its mouth, is the town of South Bend, first settled in 1881, and having an active growth,
