The Search For Station Camp
May 28, 2008
By Brian F. Harrison
A stark gray wooden church, some weather-wrecked remains of small buildings standing amid scotch broom and canary grass. A wooded hillside to the north, the Columbia River on the south. I was standing on an arc of sandy riverbank, ready to begin the most important archaeological project of my career, and wondered if we would end up finding anything.
I had driven past this area a hundred times, thinking the church photogenic. But I dismissed the few acres around it as a pretty boring piece of landscape, albeit with a spectacular view of the river. Now I was responsible for figuring out the history of the place, the lives and behaviors of those who had lived here, and whether enough remained of their activities to make the site significant to America’s sense of itself.
The Washington State Historical Society (WSHS) pushed hard for a study of the area around the church, two miles west of the Astoria Bridge. This would be the site of an interpretive park to commemorate the bicentennial of Lewis and Clark’s arrival at the Pacific Ocean in 1805. The National Park Service coordinated the cultural resource study, contracting with my company to perform a series of historical and archaeological researches at the site.
The Historical Society negotiated purchase of about fifteen acres of this rivershore, a crescent-shaped parcel separated from the Columbia River by the riprapped roadbed of Highway 101. The plan was to realign the highway from its dangerous curve along the river and run it straight through the property, utilizing the area freed up between the new highway and the old for a commemorative park.
But first, I needed to determine if there were any remains of the Corps of Discovery’s campsite, or intact remnants of the Chinook Indian village Lewis and Clark visited. Federal law requires that any such remains be carefully studied and documented before the road could be moved, or utilities installed. If finds were spectacular enough, the road and park would have to be redesigned to preserve them. But that was not my decision.
What was so special about finding remains of Lewis and Clark’s short visit to Pacific County? Well, for one thing, during more than 28 months of travel, they set up camp over 600 times. Yet no physical evidence of their campsites has ever been found. Anywhere. So finding something, anything, which could definitively be associated with the expedition and their Station Camp, would be tremendous in its scientific and historical importance. Not to mention a huge tourist draw for the lower Columbia River area.
Lewis and Clark ran out of continent when they arrived in southwest Washington in November of 1805. Their journey here was, by their own account, more miserable than anything they had encountered the previous 4,000 miles. The Corps of Discovery left from Fort Dubois near St. Louis on May 21, 1804, and arrived at the Columbia estuary a year and a half later. From their night’s camp across from what is now called Pillar Rock, in Wahkiakum County, Clark exulted,
“Great joy in camp we are in View of the Ocian…this great Pacific Octean which we been So long anxious to See, and the roreing or noise made by the waves brakeing on the rockey Shores (as I Suppose) may be heard distinctly”
Clark was actually looking at the Columbia’s estuary, some twenty miles from the ocean.
The group continued down river, spending two miserable nights on Gray’s Bay, being thoroughly soaked by torrential rain and high tides. After attempting for several tempestuous days to get around Point Ellice, they succeeded, finding themselves on a sandy beach. William Clark reflected on their situation:
“… Set out passed the blustering Point below which is a Sand beech, with a Small marshey bottom for 3 miles on the Stard. Side, on which is a large village of 36 houses deserted by the Inds. & in full possession of the flees…”
The expedition made camp near the old Chinook settlement and stayed there from November 15th to the 25th, considering this place the end of their westward voyage. Both Captains Lewis and Clark scouted nearby territory from this new base camp, including Cape Disappointment and the Long Beach Peninsula. Clark also did extensive survey observations and calculations from this site, hence the name Station Camp. (At least four serious attempts have been made to precisely locate their campsite from Clark’s surveying notes, but the truth is, nobody knows for sure.) While staying at this site the captains met several Chinooks, including two chiefs, Comcomly and Chilarlawil, and discovered ample evidence of a lively commerce the previous decade between the Chinook Indians and maritime fur trade vessels from Britain and the United States.
During their sojourn on the “butifull Sand beech,” the Captains polled the expedition members as to where they ought to spend the winter. In a remarkable exercise of democracy, the votes of the Shoshoni woman Sacagawea and Captain Clark’s slave York, plus those of the enlisted men, were also recorded. For this reason, WSHS Director David Nicandri has called Station Camp “The Independence Hall of the American West,” a place to be revered for extending self-governance to the continent’s farthest shore.
The majority of expedition members voted to stay near the mouth of the river, rather than turning homeward and wintering with the Nez Perce Indians. On December 5th, Captain Lewis returned from a reconnaissance with information of a good site for a winter encampment on the shores of the Netul River, a short distance upstream from Youngs Bay. There they built Fort Clatsop, staying for 106 days before beginning their return trip to the United States on March 23rd.
Along the lower river, the following decades saw Euro-American settlement proceed rapidly. Across the Columbia, John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company established a settlement at Fort Astoria in 1811. Near the site of Lewis and Clark’s camp, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) built a store in 1840, and in 1848 the Catholic Church established Stella Maris mission. In the next decade Irish immigrant Patrick J. McGowan founded a successful salmon packing business in the area. The ghost town of McGowan is now represented by a few remnant dwellings, as well as a 1903 office building, a 1904 church and a house built in 1911.
The questions to be answered were these: What lies beneath the placid surface of McGowan? Would we find any remnant of Station Camp? Might there be remains of the Chinook Indian village that Lewis and Clark encountered 200 years ago? Did the salmon cannery operations leave behind any traces that we might recognize?
To answer these questions, I worked with the National Park Service (NPS) to develop a detailed research design. My strategy then was to employ experienced and industrious archaeological technicians. These two scientists had been trained by the preeminent historical archaeologists in the Northwest, and would be the core of the team that worked so successfully at the site of Station Camp.
The first thing we did was to dig a series of ‘shovel probes’, small excavations scattered over the whole area of the proposed park and realigned highway. Passing the sediments through fine-mesh screens and carefully recording the location and depth of everything found in the probes, we developed some ideas of where valuable information might be gained with more extensive excavations.
I made some assumptions in analyzing the materials. For one thing, I figured that small glass beads were trade goods probably used by Native peoples for decoration. Stone artifacts relating to fishing, hunting and food processing were probably likewise of Chinook origin and use. Fire-cracked rock (FCR, as archaeologists call it) would be found where Native campfires were used to heat river-rounded stones, which were then placed in boxes and baskets to cook food.
We counted, weighed, photographed and mapped most everything we found, no matter how insignificant it might seem. That’s what you do in archaeology: you document what you find, because you are simultaneously studying and destroying forever the site where you are working. And you never know ahead of time what evidence you find will prove important in understanding the people who once lived there.
As our work continued, the maps began to show patterns of distribution, both vertically and horizontally. As we expected, there was some disturbance of the deposits, as the construction of the cannery and associated buildings in the mid-19th century had stirred up the sandy soil, bringing up older artifacts. Normally, the older materials are beneath younger in a layer-cake arrangement. But when a garden is plowed, or a drainage ditch is dug, things can get confusing.
The horizontal distribution of 19th century debris was clearer, as I had already done considerable research in local museums, libraries and other archives. I had a pretty good notion of where the McGowan buildings had been constructed and (most of them) demolished. Old maps, pictures, plans and even aerial photographs gave me some idea of not only where the buildings had been, but where there were roads, garden plots, ditches and other sources of disturbance.
This locational analysis focused on the actual living areas where people in the past worked, processed fish and game, cooked, made tools, worshipped, built houses and engaged in trade. We drew maps of beads, FCR, ceramics, window glass, metal objects, stone tools, ash, fish bones, piles of stones, and unusual soil color and textures. Twice we imported a specialist in Ground-Penetrating Radar, whose printouts suggested features deep beneath the sand.
All this work was done under clear skies, beneath the benign gaze of crows and bald eagles. From our site we could watch fishing boats and cargo ships passing on the river, and flights of brown pelicans skimming just above the waves. It was easy enough to imagine the cannery in full operation, then shift a mental gear and see the Natives fishing and trading with the Boston ships before Lewis and Clark. Beyond that into the mists of prehistory, we could not imagine.
The hundreds of artifacts to analyze grew into thousands, though not the sort of things that you might imagine. The ceramics and the glass vessels were in small fragments we call shards, broken in use or after discard. But that was okay, since we could reap as much information from the shards as we could from intact forms.
About two-thirds of the ceramics were produced in England in the late 18th century, of a type referred to as creamware. This was a bit of a surprise, since this type predates Hudson’s Bay Company ceramics (generally a transfer-print decorated white earthenware) by a generation. A number of shards of Chinese export porcelain called Cantonware were also found, along with just three pieces of transfer print.
Other artifacts dating from the fur trade era included musket balls, gunflints and a lead seal, used to indicate the security of a bale of furs.
Bones were small and many had been through a fire; on analysis, most turned out to be from fish, including both salmon and sturgeon. The iron objects were impossibly rusty, and most survived from the cannery days at McGowan. Native artifacts included arrowheads, ground stone abraders and a pecked stone net weight. Dozens of clay and stone pipes for smoking tobacco or kinnikinnik were found, carved from soapstone or argillite, a black slate.
The glass beads, numbering in the hundreds, were widely scattered. Most of the beads were of a type called wire-wound, which was another surprise, and were deep ocean blue. At Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fort Vancouver, most of the beads are drawn, and white. This indicated a pre-HBC source of the beads at our site, matching the pottery implications.
At the end of all this digging and drawing and mapping, we had a pretty good idea that there were intact living areas yet to be studied. This triggered the next phase of research at the site, this one organized by archaeologists at Fort Vancouver. The NPS has developed a remarkable resource at the Fort, with extensive lab facilities to supplement the interpretive functions. The staff has considerable expertise in excavation and interpretation of fur trade-era sites in the Northwest, and they were assigned to finish the work at Station Camp.
The strategy now shifted from small excavation squares to larger units, and the work for the most part was carried out beneath impromptu shelters of visquene stretched over PVC pipes, like plastic Quonset huts. Since we were now into winter, the weather turned horrible, and many mornings the top layer of soil was frozen solid.
Wind blew off the Columbia River, and the huts responded to changes in air pressure by billowing out, then compressing upon themselves. One of my colleagues remarked that it was like “working inside the lungs of a whale.” Those fortunate enough to excavate inside the shelters found themselves comfortable in t-shirts, while outside work required several layers to protect them from the brutally cold wind. Archaeology in good weather can be physically taxing; adding in the inclement conditions made it exhausting.
The larger-scale excavations under the shelters defined several living areas in great and confusing detail. There were not so many artifacts, but traces of past life were recorded in the sand by subtle differences in color and texture. By separating out these ‘
features’ the archaeologists could identify where walls had been, as well as fire pits and storage or cache pits.
Near the end of the scheduled project, several wide black lines were found running diagonally across one of the large units, right in the centerline of the proposed highway. Closer inspection revealed that they were charred planks from a Chinookan house, little more than stains in the soil. It was astonishing to think that the feature had survived 200 years beneath the sand, undisturbed by all that went on a few feet overhead.
The stains and other features gave evidence of three structures, Chinookan plank houses used seasonally, part of what the Tribe calls their Middle Village. Nobody now alive can say if these are the houses that Lewis and Clark scavenged to build their shelter against the dirty weather of 1805. But there is no doubt members of the Corps of Discovery saw them standing on the beach, and that to me is an awesome thought.
The excavations ended with over 10,000 artifacts, many dating from 1792 to 1830, being removed for study in the labs at Fort Vancouver. Within days of the onset of realignment of the highway, all work was halted by discovery of a number of Native burials, and the project is in limbo.
What we discovered at the site was not Lewis and Clark, but a village where trade with Euro-American ships had occurred for a dozen years before the Corps of Discovery arrived on the scene for their ten days. The salmon cannery left traces of itself in hardware, tarred net fragments and canning solder. Tragically, diseases introduced by the traders and settlers nearly wiped out the local Native populations within a few decades. Their living descendents are even now working to reclaim their own history.
On the last day of the dig, I was standing on the arc of sandy riverbank where I had begun, imagining the canoes paddling into the shallows of the river to net salmon. Up the beach, the plankhouses are wreathed in smoke from cooking fires, people are twining nets and flaking tools. On the horizon to the west, the first ships of foreigners bring trade goods and the strange ways of the outside world.