More on Skamokawa

When I posted the old photos of my grandfather and his family some people asked me "how do you pronounce Skamokawa?" (Skamokawa is the name of the town where my grandfather grew up and where the photos were taken.) You pronounce the town's name "ska-MOCK-away."

The town of Skamokawa is pretty interesting, actually. The photos in my earlier post were taken in 1903 or 1904, 100 years ago.

A hundred years before that Lewis & Clark spent two nights (Nov. 8th and Nov. 25th, 1805) at a small Indian village which later became the town of Skamokawa. The town reached its peak in the early 1900s with a population of 500 people in 1910. In those days there were no roads to Skamokawa - all transportation was via the water - Columbia River, Steamboat Slough and Skamokawa Creek. All homes from that era were built facing the water.

A fine hotel and schoolhouse were built and three large shingle mills operated around the clock. Sidewheelers and sternwheelers visited the town several times a day. The first road wasn't built until 1915. When river traffic dried up so did the town. One web site calls Skamokawa a semi-ghost town now. (I got some of this information from this site.)

If you want to see photos of Skamokawa today I recommend this web site. I borrowed their photo of Redmen Hall to include with this post above. These days Redmen Hall contains a small museum with artifacts from local history. I went there a couple times with my parents before my Dad passed away. We found old photos which included some family members there. My Mom also donated some old family photos to the museum.

But what is more significant about Redmen Hall is that it is a restored 1894 schoolhouse. The very schoolhouse, in fact, where my grandfather and his siblings were educated. They did a great job with the restoration and in fact we were able to see some old furniture including a child's desk from the era when my grandfather was a boy.

If anyone is trying to figure out what the sign says in the photo it's "River Life Interpretive Center." That's the name of the museum housed at Redmen Hall today.

The web site with the photos also includes excerpts from the journals of Lewis & Clark from when they visited the area. Pretty cool stuff!