SHELTONIANS CELEBRATE the Fourth of July at First and Railroad sometime between 1904 and 1907. We know that much because the Angle Building built at Fourth and Railroad in 1904 is in place here and the Hotel Webb at First and Railroad still stands. Eleven died when the Webb burned down in 1907.

Vancouver and the Indians

Mason County's first visitor, George Vancouver, captained his launch down Hood's Channel, as he named it. It was May 12, 1792, and he'd chosen the scenic route, leaving Lieutenant Puget to map the easterly inland waters of Puget Sound.

Not until passing "several runs of fresh water," however, was Vancouver approached by a canoe with three "new friends" bartering for "beads, iron and copper." Vancouver visited their "habitations," located near the mouth of the Skokomish River. "The finest stream of fresh water we had seen," he noted, "These good people conducted themselves in the most friendly manner. They had little to dispose of ... yet they bartered ... small fish, cockles and clams ..."

The Skokomish inhabited the shoreline of Hood Canal, in summer in small seasonal camps, in winter in larger cedar longhouses. Several families lived together in the shelters, slit at the peak to exhaust the campfire smoke. Their cedar canoes slid through the inland waters like the silver salmon central to their economic, social and ceremonial life.

In fact, Indians lived on all the inland waters, including the Skokomish on Hood Canal, the T'peeksin on Little Skookum and the Sa-heh-wamish on Big Skookum.

1854: Early government

By 1853, nearly 1,000 people lived in Thurston County, which stretched north from Fort Vancouver. However, the sparsely populated region was difficult to govern. In the 1854 territorial legislature, David Shelton, representative from Thurston County, which included Hood Canal and Hammersley Inlet, introduced a bill for a county to be called Sawamish County, after Shelton's Indian neighbors. It passed on April 15, 1854. It was signed by C.H. Mason, secretary of state, who was signing into existence the county that would bear his name some 10 years later.

But the year 1853 brought not only settlers to the territory for the land, but capitalists for the timber. William Talbot and Andrew Pope sent ships from Maine to build a sawmill on Hood Canal at Port Gamble. San Francisco ship captain William Renton started the Port Blakely Mill Company on Bainbridge Island, Marshall Blinn built a mill at Seabeck, and George Meiggs bought a mill at Port Madison. These men would feed a global appetite for piling, spar poles, cants, lumber, railroad ties and mineshaft framing timbers, much of it from Mason County.

The earliest Mason County settlers came for the timber. The first white man to file a donation land claim was Hugh Goldsborough on March 15, 1853. His partner, Michael Simmons, didn't file for his mill site on Big Skookum until September 15 that year. Wesley Gosnell, Simmons' partner in the Skookum Sawmill, filed a claim next to the mill site on March 19, 1853. On April 15, the Skookum Sawmill partners – Simmons, Gosnell and William M. Miller – agreed to build a mill on Gosnell Creek.

Simmons had been always traveling west. He acquired his "Colonel" moniker as a wagon train leader in 1844. In 1846 Simmons and others waded through muck and rain to arrive at Deschutes Falls, where Simmons named that first colony New Market (now Tumwater).

On May 10, 1853, David Shelton "commenced" his settlement. He and his brother, Tillman, pulled their Indian canoe onto the saltchuck just north of the creek Goldsborough had settled on. Shelton's claim leaned against the hillside, away from the Sa-heh-wamish Indian village. Shelton, too, had participated in early territorial politics, serving in 1852 as a Thurston County commissioner.

He was born in North Carolina in 1812. His parents brought him west to Missouri in 1819. In 1832, Shelton fought in the Black Hawk War. After marrying in 1836, a year later he joined others in a war to drive the Mormons from Missouri. After his father died in 1846, David and his wife, Frances, joined the next wagon train west in May 1847, arriving at Fort Vancouver in November and buying flour and syrup with his last dollar. The next spring, he turned to mining the California gold fields, returning with $2,000. In 1852, he bought a share of a small ship and with other early settlers sailed up the coast to the new land on Puget Sound.

Another early settler in 1853 was Ed Miller, a ship's captain from New York, who settled up the inlet on Oakland Bay. Soon a larger party, led by William Morrow, a Baptist minister, settled on Skookum Bay (now called Oakland Bay) and would call their new home Oakland. They had come from Iowa, and they were all related to Morrow: the Fergusons, the John McEwans, the Brittions, the William Champs and Lee Hancock. They left the Midwest because of their distaste of slavery and arrived on Puget Sound hungry for land.

The immigrants formed the new county government. In July 1854, Hancock, Gosnell and Charles Graham met at Simmons' home for the first county commissioners' meeting. Their first duty was to call for elections. The first county seat was at Mount Olive, at the head of Skookum Bay, but after the winter rains, commissioners moved the seat to Oakland, where most of the county officials, the Morrow family, lived.

By the end of 1854, Washington Territorial Governor Stevens was making treaties with the tribes. On December 26, 1854, the Medicine Creek Treaty was signed by local chiefs. By 1855, the white population had almost doubled, and tensions exploded when Colonel McAllister was killed at Nisqually and Colonel Ebey was beheaded by tribal warriors at Whidbey Island. The Indian War of 1855-1856 had begun.

A blockhouse was built at Aron Collins' Point. David Shelton, Jackson and William Morrow, Franklin Kennedy, Michael Simmons and Jacob Eckler sheltered their families and formed a provisional militia, but no one was attacked.

In 1859, the business of logging sprouted the new skid road town of Arkada, at the mouth of Hammersley Inlet. Sailing ships couldn't enter the fierce tidal current that swirls out past Cape Hope, so Simmons brought his pilings and squares to where the ships could anchor. Soon saloons leaned out over the beach. Hotels and other businesses serviced both the logger and the sailor.

(Please turn to page 38)