At the end of Eld Inlet, this area supports broad oyster beds where the famous Olympia oysters, of exceptional delicacy and small size, are grown. These are Washington’s only native oysters. Seldom more than an inch-and-a-half in diameter, Olympia oysters have always been a very popular treat. Due to overharvesting and water pollution, however, oyster stocks in both Willapa Bay and the Puget Sound were significantly depleted by the mid-twentieth...

This series of hills begins southwest of Olympia; the highest hill is 760 feet high. They extend for several miles into the Capitol State Forest. When the application for a post office, to serve the Mason County Logging Company and the Mumby Lumber and Shingle Company operations, was submitted to the post office department, the name Black Hills was proposed. The post office was eventually named Bordeaux for Thomas and...

Mile: 20

On a grassy flat in an area of logged-off land, McCleary is cut by a creek that washes under the highway and across the town through a straight ditch, marked by numerous footbridges. Several ranches of mill-workers used to be around the town; an extension of the main street ran into the millyard of the industrial plant, a sash-and-door factory owned by the McCleary Mill Company, which was named for...

Points of Interest

Old McCleary Hotel

Mile: 1

A community between Whites and McCleary, it was named for Joseph Ray, a local sawmill operator. During the 1940s the area consisted of stump land and scrubby second-growth trees. At intervals newly cleared plots, with little shacks, made their appearance. Tiers of pulpwood and ricks of fuel wood were piled along the highway awaiting shipment. This area now consists of small scattered farms and rural homes.

Mile: 5

The location of a logging camp, which was  in operation for more than 30 years as of 1941. In the community were also two lumber mills. It was named by the Northern Pacific Railway for Allen White, who built a saw mill in 1890, and operated it for many years.

Cloquallum Creek rises in Lystair Lake and flows for 21 miles southwest, through Grays Harbor County to the Chehalis River near Elma. In 1841, the Wilkes Expedition borrowed from the word Klu-kwe-ii-ub, which was the Chehalis tribe’s name for the Quillayute Indians. The first three syllables refer to a dance performed by members of a secret society in order to gain magic power in war expeditions, and the last syllable...

Adjacent to the Elma Fair Grounds (today Grays Harbor County Fair & Event Center), a race track and grandstand, are the buildings of a CCC camp, actually several barns, that are still used by the Grays Harbor County Fair & Event Center. Growing and shipping of seed was becoming a local industry in the 1940s; and a dairy plant of some size was in operation. A 4-H fair continues to...

The monotony of green pasture land is broken by clumps of large Douglas firs and by the giant evergreens and smaller maples that surround each farm and residence.

A cluster of buildings about a store and a church, it was the center of a populous area of dairy farms, poultry ranches, berry fields, and bulb farms. The church remains, along with another wood-frame grange north from the main street. The village, and the Satsop River by which it stands, are named for an Indian tribe, the Sats-a-pish which means “on a creek.”

This town consisted of a small group of old buildings hugging the highway on either side. By 1941, a logging-donkey yard, filled with donkey engines, steam shovels, and other heavy equipment, seemed to be waiting for a period of activity that may never return. There is no visible evidence of these lumber equipment graveyards along the highway today. In Brady is a Douglas fir tree farm and scattered residences. The...

Broad fields here are golden with flowering mustard, or emerald with new clover and luxuriant pasturage. Sleek dairy cattle graze near large barns and comfortable rural houses. In the stump lands a few miles further west, however, a less happy spectacle is presented—scattered farms standing in the midst of stumps, infant second-growth fir, cedar, alder, and maple, and thick underbrush. Signs tacked to some of the fence posts tell the...