Ecola Creek and the Great Whale

In the winter of eighteen oh five and eighteen oh six, the Lewis and Clark expedition was camped at Fort Clatsop, cold, hungry, and short on food. Word arrived from local Native people that a whale had washed ashore to the south. On January eighth, eighteen oh six, Captain William Clark set out with a small party, and among them was Sacagawea, who had insisted on coming to see both the ocean and the great fish.

They crossed the steep, forested spine of Tillamook Head and descended to this beach. By the time they arrived, the Tillamook people had already stripped the carcass. Clark measured its skeleton at one hundred five feet, a length that suggests it was a blue whale, the largest animal that has ever lived.

He managed to bargain for about three hundred pounds of blubber and a few gallons of oil to carry back to the fort. Clark asked the local people what they called the creature. Their word, as he heard it, was something like ekoli, and he wrote it down as Ecola, giving this creek and the state park just north of here the name they still carry today.