Ilwalco Museum

Spent the day in Ilwalco which is just down the road from Long Beach. Cape Disappointment is actually right beside Ilwalco.  There really isn't much of a downtown or actually much going on. It looks like it is still recovering after Covid. However they have a very nice little museum. 

This is a cranberry sorter for sorting the berries after they have been picked.

This is a set of boots with wooden spokes so that pickers could walk through the Cranberry bogs and not damage the vines.

This is a picture of a Clam festival held in Long Beach in May of 1947. The world's largest frying pan was made for the festival. It was  10ft by 20ft and weighed 1,300 pounds. They created a clam fritter out of 200 pounds of clams, 20 doz eggs, 20 lbs of flour and cracker meal, 10 gallons of milk and 13 gallons of oil.  They no longer use the pan but it is on display in Long Beach.

Here is a picture of the pan with Len standing beside it.

The US Lifesaving Service organized two lifesaving stations on the North Beach Peninsula. One in Ilwalco and Cape Disappointment. The Lifesaving crews used a rowing lifeboat in the early days. The boat was pushed out into the breakers, rowed by six surfmen to the ship in distress. The boat was transported to the scene of a shipwreck by wagon. After the railway was built they sometimes used the train. The lifesaving crews would hold practice drills on the beaches drawing huge groups of spectators coming to watch.  This displays also shows the evolution of lifejackets over the years.