OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, MAY 13, 2016
O
T
N
N
WARRE
WELCOME TO
O
I
A TOW
C
I
L
E
N THAT OFFERS A D
RDABLE LIFESTY
O
F
F
A
D
N
LE
US A
s grandson of a Pacifi c Northwest
sawmill worker, the feeling in
Warrenton and Hammond of working
people living well in a sensational nat-
ural setting gives me a sense of content-
ment. Grandpa and g randma would have
felt at home there.
A
My family has tremendous affection for
Warrenton, based on everything from sea-
food to sailboats to Camp Kiwanilong. If all
you know of Warrenton is its big stores and
auto dealerships, get off U.S. Highway 101
and explore.
Camp Kiwanilong, a
thriving frontier outpost
for young people back
beyond the soccer fi elds,
became a vital part of
my daughter Elizabeth’s
life for the best part of a
decade. Like Warrenton
in general, it completely
rejects pretension, but is
full of fun, mutual sup-
Matt
port and confi dence. It
Winters
attracts kids from hun-
dreds of miles away —
including my nephews Garrett and Wynston
from Dallas — and yet remains a genuine bar-
gain. It gets my strongest possible endorse-
ment. (www.campkiwanilong.org)
owadays, I mostly observe Warrenton and
Fort Stevens State Park — named after
fi rst Washington Territorial Gov. Isaac Stevens
— from my living room window in Ilwaco,
about 10 miles across the broad expanse of
the Columbia River estuary. A quarter-century
ago, I loved wandering Warrenton’s mooring
basin with its expensive but apparently forgot-
ten sailboats. They sparked daydreams of liv-
ing aboard and popping out into the Pacifi c for
some blue-water cruising. (I admit to continu-
ing fantasies about spending my years between
70 and 90 sailing a Nauticat 44 around the
by-then ice-free waters of the Arctic Ocean ...)
Less fantastically and far more affordably,
Warrenton still provides some of my favorite
fi sh. There can be few small towns in America
with better opportunities to buy pure and deli-
cious fresh and canned seafood. And, of course,
all our local ports offer perfect access to go out
and catch it ourselves. It’s impossible to over-
emphasize just how lucky we are in this region
— how amazingly blessed. It’s a delicious life.
Contributed Photos
Falls Brand is an uncommon salmon can label from Hammond’s Point Adams Packing Co., founded in 1920.
N
wenty years ago, near the start of my
minor obsession with the history of the
Northwest seafood industry, I found and
bought a nearly complete set of old canning
labels from Hammond’s Point Adams Pack-
ing Co. They were glued to boards, perhaps
as a school or county fair exhibit, but peeled
off easily enough. Even after decades of trad-
ing, I still have a big one on my offi ce wall:
“FISHBO, A Natural and Unadulterated 100
Per Cent Pure Fox and Kennel Food, Fit for
Human Consumption.”
Talking at the time with a Point Adams
retiree, he told a familiar story of being ordered
by an owner or foreman to burn the contents of
the cannery’s label room — in retrospect like
burning $100 bills.
Equally sought after, by at least some of
my eccentric fellow collectors, are items from
Warrenton Clam Co., which used to be located
near the present-day marina. In something of a
consortium with the Wiegardt family of Wil-
lapa Bay, the Sigurdsons canned razor clams
from Washington, Oregon and Alaska for a
wasn’t going well, “due to strikes among the
clam diggers, extremely heavy seas, and unfa-
vorable tides.”
ommercial razor clam harvests continue
here in the 21st century, though on a
much-reduced scale compared to the glory days.
An estimated 15 percent of Clatsop County
razor clams are sold commercially, while in
Pacifi c County, for-profi t digging is limited to
the Willapa Spits, small tidal islands near the
mouth of the bay. (The spits have been closed
to harvesting for two years due to slightly ele-
vated levels of the marine toxin domoic acid.)
However, other species of clams are safe
and abundant inside Willapa Bay — includ-
ing manilas, softshells, cockles, bent-noses,
butters and gapers. Since about 2000, some of
these have become a major part of Willapa’s
economy, supplementing oysters.
Shellfi sh grower Warren Cowell, a friend
who exemplifi es Willapa’s do-it-yourself
ethos, published this concise manifesto earlier
this week:
“So this is how we dig clams, on our hands
and knees. This is how I got what I have today.
Decades of hard work. No inheritance. No
handouts. No grants. No subsidies. I did it with
my back and my tenacity. Now we have to fi ght
politically to keep what we have. To those more
entitled, self-righteous individuals in the differ-
ent government agencies, and especially those
non government organizations that want to keep
me from farming the way we always have, I
have only this to say to you: You can kiss my
muddy ass! I’m not going anywhere!”
Past generations of clam-men and women
are applauding. Let’s make sure there are
always places in our region for clams and all
who dig them.
— MSW
Matt Winters is editor and publisher of the
Chinook Observer and Coast River Business
Journal.
C
A dump-truck load of razor clams awaits processing in Warrenton Clam Co.’s Nahcot-
ta plant, circa 1930.
T
Contributed Photo
ABOVE: A Warrenton Clam Co. label from 1930 advertises that the company’s prod-
ucts were awarded first-place medals at the Universal Exposition in St. Louis, Mis-
souri, in 1904 and at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland in 1905.
BOTTOM: A World War I-era Warrenton Clam Co. letterhead advertised the company’s
product line — not just razor clams, but also salmon, berries and string beans.
couple generations, from around 1900 until
about the outbreak of World War II.
Housewives were encouraged to write for
a free recipe book that calls Warrenton razor
clams “wholesome little vegetarians. ... They
dig into the clean white sand and there the
clam diggers hunt them at the exact moment
when the receding tide covers them with a
foot or less of sweet salt water, washing them
clean and adding to their fresh fl avor of min-
gled sea and sunshine.”
A 1921 trade journal reported resumption
of canning after World War I, during which
“practically all of the members of the War-
renton Clam Co. volunteered for military ser-
vice.” But the renewed clam pack that year
STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher • LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
• CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
• DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
Founded in 1873