4 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
Books, gardening, hiking, hobbies,
recreation, personalities, travel & more
CLOSE TO HOME
TRAVELING FROM YAKAITL-WIMAK TO WILLAPA BAY BY CANOE
Second interlude: Portage into the Willapa
By DAVID CAMPICHE
Note: This is part two of a three-
part series.
Jimmy Goulter tells stories of
his grandfather, John R. Goulter,
and grandmother, Jenny, living in a
pioneer house built by John’s father,
Allen, in the mid-19th century. The
house rested beside the Wallicut Riv-
er, where today U.S. Highway 101
intersects with U.S. Alternate Route
101, just two miles east of Ilwaco.
John R. Goulter later became a mem-
ber of the Washington State Leg-
islature and was often pulled away
from his farm for weeks at a time.
One might assume that he sometimes
traveled with R. H. Espy (another
legislator) from Oysterville, the
great-grandfather of Sidney Stevens,
a favorite writer of local lore and a
fine historian. Jimmy’s father, Allen,
was born in that house in 1919.
There were few roads then,
and none led to Olympia. John R.
Goulter most likely portaged rolling
hills dozens of times, and then use
river canoes and ferries to complete
that 110-mile journey. Left at home,
Jenny kept a loaded shotgun by the
front door. Washington Territory was
still the wild west. Out one of her
few windows, she could see flights
of swans and geese and immea-
surable hordes of waterfowl. They
settled on her fields and charged the
night with contorted sounds, with
squawks and whistles and honks and
raspy protests. Coyotes stalked them.
Pre-contact, the Native Americans
hunted them with bows and arrows.
They were keen archers, these First
Peoples, and the numbers of these
birds must have been daunting. Up
these same streams that laced her
property like spider webs, tens of
thousands of salmon bolted up any
waterway that offered sanctuary,
a spot to lay a red and regenerate
offspring.
The small village of Chinook
was another nine miles east up the
Columbia River, an ancient Tsinuk
(Chinook) outpost, once number-
ing in the thousands of indigenous
peoples but now pummeled to a
dozen small lodges of dispirited
inhabitants. Early chronicler James
Gilcrest Swan defined the new Bos-
ton (a universal native term for the
American settlers) village: “We now
drew near the village proper, which
consisted of some 12 to 14 houses,
occupied by whites, and nearly the
same numbers of Indian lodges.”
From Swan’s journals, “The
Northwest Coast” or “Three Years’
Residence in Washington Territory,”
we gather that the Wallicut River
was a small artery leading from
the Columbia River to an overland
trail that terminated on Bear River,
about two miles from the mouth
of that sturdy stream. Betsy Trick,
a half-Chinook of recent legend,
defined the Wallicut as “brook of
shining pebbles.” The trek over the
Willapa Hills was more than a mile
and arduous.
This Wallicut portage was one of
three routes followed by the Chinook
peoples from the Columbia River
to Willapa Bay. A portage is a short
overland route that a person follows,
carrying a boat or supplies between
two waterways.
The Chinook River (Wap-
palooche) portage was also well
traveled, as was a portage from
Black Lake in Ilwaco, north and
then east up Tarlatt Slough and into
the Willapa. The portages were later
used by the early pioneers, including
the Goulter family.
Jimmy’s father, Allen Goulter II,
a local veterinarian and World War II
vet, was a well-regarded doctor who
administered care to horses, cows,
cats and dogs. When one of my own
father’s springer spaniels was left
tattered in a dog fight — natural-
ly, over a female — the two docs,
Goulter and Campiche, spent most of
a night doing skin grafts on the dying
animal. He survived, only to fight
and lose again, reminding this writer
of something akin to the War of the
Roses. Oh, how men love to quarrel!
This held true of the Chinook and the
white settlers as well, an unfortunate
fact that we tend to overlook.
The Wallicut to Bear River
portage is nearly invisible today. But
Jimmy Goulter knows the route well.
Many of his observations are based
on memories and details from his
youth. On the other hand, Jimmy is
a bit of a sleuth, and he knows his
geography.
At the top of the Wallicut was
the Marshall Somme property, and a
house with a horse and pack. For a
buck, a settler could rent the horse,
and the dutiful animal would carry
family belongings and/or supplies on
its broad back across their field, and
then along a meandering trail that
followed a ridgeline, which today
parallels, crosses and often follows
Highway 101 over the big hill just
west of the Bear River Bridge. It
terminates just north of that same
bridge on an elevated river bank,
just a couple hundred yards down
Jeldness Road. The Chinook had
an encampment here, and probably
initiated a tariff for the use of their
landing. Like a modern-day parking
lot, canoes were cached for the re-
turn trip up Willapa Bay to the Chi-
nook winter lodges. It would have
been difficult to drag the long cedar
vessels overland. Swan describes one
as weighing a ton.
Not impossible however; the
infamous wordsmith, Willard Espy,
describes the portage — and how his
grandfather, R. H. Espy, stole a buri-
al canoe, and he and Isaac A. Clark
carried the vessel on their shoulders
and then launched into Willapa Bay.
As the two entrepreneurs began to
paddle down the deep-water channel
that traversed the bay, the Willapa
shimmered with quicksilver light.
The two easterners were planning a
rendezvous with Espy’s Indian friend
in Oysterville. Late that afternoon,
their Boston Tillicum was born. The
seedling outpost would be called
Oysterville.
PHOTO BY DAVID CAMPICHE
Pictured is the Lower Wallicut River on Jimmy Goulter’s field in Pacific
County, Washington. The Wallicut River was a favored portage of the
Chinook peoples and first Euro-American pioneers.
PHOTO BY DAVID CAMPICHE
Pictured is Tarlatt Slough at Willapa Bay.
Another portage involved traveling from
Black Lake in Ilwaco, north and then east
up Tarlatt Slough and into the Willapa.
THE
WALLICUT
RIVER
PORTAGE
WAS ONE
OF THREE
ROUTES
FOLLOWED
BY THE
CHINOOK
PEOPLES
FROM THE
COLUMBIA
RIVER TO
WILLAPA BAY.