Clark County, Washington

Clark County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

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History

Northern Clark County
Chelatchie Prarie

Clark County was organized in 1850 with Vancouver the county seat of government. The Donation Land Act of 1850 provided free land for settlers and opened the entire county for land claims. In 1853 the Washington Territory was created from the Oregon Territory with the Columbia River separating the two territories.

The large upper drainage area of Chelatchie Creek near Amboy attracted settlers early in Clark County's history. Chelatchie is an Native American name meaning "Valley of the Tall Ferns." Ferns and low bush were commonly covering the land as a result of an early fire which devastated the valley. When the brush was cleared for cultivation, the valley was found well suited for growing grain and vegetables.

Early Settlers

Early settlers took claims along the East Fork of the Lewis River near the current site of LaCenter. John Timmen, Aurelius Wilkins and John Pollock all arrived in 1852. As the settlers were arriving, they began coexisted peacefully with the Native Americans in the northern Clark County area in spite of false alarms. In 1855 word reached the people in isolated homesteads that renegade Native Americans would attack the settlements. Women and children were rowed across the Columbia River to the St. Helens blockhouse in Oregon. This false alarm resulted in the formation of the Lewis River Rangers, 44 volunteers representing the valley homesteaders. The Rangers did a great deal of drilling and marching for four winter months. The regular army in Vancouver did not like "farmers marching around playing soldier." Fortunately there was no fighting because the local Native Americans got along well with the settlers. When spring came, tensions subsided and the Lewis River defenders went back to plowing and stump clearing.
La Center, Main Street

The Lewis River, Lewis River Valley, and Lewisville were named after the first settler on the river, Adolphus Lee Lewis. He was a county surveyor in 1856 and probably had bearing on the name of the river being changed from the Native American name Cathlapootle to Lewis River. In 1866, Lincoln, one of the first settlements along the river, was founded. This small trading post and post office were located at the mouth of Lockwood Creek, named after Reuben Lockwood who settled the area.

John Timmen founded the town of La Center in 1871. It was the center of trade for many years until the condition of the roads improved. Steamboat Captain William Weir built the first house and store with a post office. A devastating fire consumed the wharfs and warehouses in LaCenter in 1890.

Stoughton, located at the end of the Native American trail was established in 1872 by Mr. Stoughton. This settlement has a small trading post and mail was deposited there until 1875.
The Mascot and the Cresap

In 1874, Adam Reid, a timber businessman, founded Etna, located eight miles east of Woodland on the North Fork of the Lewis River. Mr. Reid named the settlement after Aetna Greene, Indiana, where he was born. James Forbes homesteaded near the mouth of Cedar Creek in 1882 and built a house, store and steamboat dock providing essentials to early loggers and mill workers.

The Garner family came to Yacolt Prairie in 1887, homesteading 160 acres, and raising a family of five children.

This information was provided courtesy of Roberta Emerick, North Clark Historical Museum Coordinator. Special credit is given to the following people who supplied additional information: Louise Allworth Tucker for her book Battle Ground-In and Around; Louise Frasier for her book A History of Amboy; Orville Stout for his book Yacolt History; and North Clark Historical Museum historians Jeanine Liston and Margaret Colf Hepola.

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Clark County, Washington

County Resource Guide

The history of our nation can be seen as a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names we’ve given our counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the “characteristic features of our country!”

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn’t the only reason to explore counties’ role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today’s counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990’s political slogan “Think globally, act locally.”

Penn Foster High School

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