Posted By Jake's Party Planner on November 11, 2010

“O! how Horriable is the day!” Captain William Clark  November 22, 1805. This is the name of the annual celebration at the Knappton Cove Heritage Center. Saturday, November 13 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. in conjunction with the “Ocian in View” Cultural Weekend at the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum in Ilwaco. The property has been a camping and fishing site for Chinook Indians.  A  fish cannery and during the  50′s it was a sport fishing camp.

It served as US Public Health Service Quarantine Station (1899-1938).  An estimated 100,000 people passed through the Quarantine Station. Cargo and immigrant ships that entered the Columbia River at Astoria would be inspected if it was determined that disease or vermin was on board the ship, it was sent to across the river to Knappton Cove.  Astoria did not want the facility on the Oregon side. People traveled for weeks by ship from  Europe  Asia and parts unknown then they had to pass a health inspection and have their possessions “deloused” in large retorts. Smallpox, cholera, bubonic plague and typhoid were among the  concerns. If you didn’t pass the inspection, you were isolated and detained. Ships went through a 48 hour fumigation process, which included filling the ships with fumes sulfur pots to kill rats. (Later cyanide gas was used to fumigate the ships.)

Nancy Bell outside the tackle shop during the mid 1950s where she sold coffee,
candy bars, and fishing tackle.  Bell family collection.

Shoe button hooks were often used to pull back the eyelid to inspect for Trachoma

Welcome to America!

I had to ask how these work and now I know.

Clever display

I  though this was pretty here it looks like a bunch of dead fish.

It is a charming building & if you go to this event they have a assortment of baked goods hot cider & coffee:)

A homemade wooden peg leg washed up on shore here! I made my cute mom model it. She was trying to be a pirate here hummm?

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