Washington Territory History Project

PSA: There is a 100% chance of weather today, and at least 100% tomorrow.

The Coyote Wall, sometimes erroneously called "The Syncline", is an impressive, tilted basalt columnar cliff on the Washington side of the Columbia between Bingen/White Salmon and Lyle, best appreciated from across the river from Mosier, Oregon, where the attached picture was taken from.

I say "erroneously" because, geologically speaking, this is a part of the "Bingen Anticline", not a syncline. You can look those up if you're interested in definitions, but the reason for this post is because the Coyote Wall holds some special significance to me where it concerns my family history.

In late 1855 my 3rd Great Grandfather, Joseph Bradshaw, was deployed to Washington Territory as a member of the U.S. Army's 9th Infantry. They went by sea to Aspinwall in Panama, then by rail across the isthmus, the railroad having been completed earlier that year. From there they went by sea to Puget Sound and Fort Steilacoom. His wife Elizabeth, known as "Betsey", along with her toddler daughter (my great-great grandmother), had to find her own way out west to join him. This was because a few years earlier when the 4th Infantry was sent to Oregon Territory via Panama, families of the soldiers were allowed to come along as well. This was before the railroad across Panama existed, and the ensuing trek across the isthmus resulted in massive portions of the travelers getting so sick from jungle diseases that they couldn't leave for many weeks, and more than few died. The Army was not going to be accommodating or even encouraging families to come along in future deployments as a result.

So Betsey, now pregnant, along with her 1 1/2-year-old daughter Sarah, packed up all they owned and trekked from Fort Monroe, Virginia to Missouri, then across the Oregon Trail to The Dalles, a journey that took many months. They arrived at some point prior to August of 1856 and that's when and where her second child, Joseph Jr. was born.

It's hard to know where Joseph and Betsey and the children lived, but a book on the history of the gorge by James Attwell suggests that they lived at Mosier for at least part of the time. In any case, Joseph re-enlisted in the Army for another 5 years at The Dalles in June of 1859, and he either did that because he and Betsey had split up and he didn't have anything better to do with his life, or they split up because he re-enlisted. We will likely never know, because Betsey began telling a tale about how her husband "died soon after arriving" and it's a story that she stuck with until the end of her life, and one that the family of today believed until only recently when I discovered Joseph actually went on to live a fairly long life, dying in 1888 in Los Angeles.

So, by 1860 for sure, Betsey was with another man named William Gilmer. Their first child George was born in 1861, probably while they lived just a handful of miles south of The Dalles along Mill Creek somewhere. What is known of their lives during the next decade comes from George, and he said that they lived in Mosier and eventually across the river at "Rowland Bottom" during the latter half of the decade.

Rowland Bottom is what is known today as Rowland Lake, which back then was just a cove of the Columbia River, and it would be at the extreme right edge of this picture.

The Gilmer family is counted here in the 1870 census, one of only perhaps 5 or 6 total families living along the river between Bingen/White Salmon and Dallesport. Sarah, just 16-years-old at the time, was already the mother of two children, and stepmother of another child, and is listed in the same census about 10 miles away, with her husband William Creviston as one of perhaps 5 or 6 families living between Bingen/White Salmon and modern-day Stevenson, which didn't exist yet. I've since confirmed the location as the relatively flat area along the river below Underwood where the Broughton Mill now sits, shown as "Hood" on today's maps. It's possible the Crevistons gave it that name.

I have one earlier mention in historical documents of the Gilmer family at Rowland Bottom that strongly suggests the location of their homestead. In a book on the history of Klickitat County, William Gilmer's home is identified as one of the three polling places where county residents would go to vote during elections. This is in 1868. That same publication identifies the precinct and voting location by name as "15-Mile Point". Nothing on today's maps carries that name, but taking into consideration that Rockland, which is today's Dallesport, was designated as the County Seat at the time (just some guy's house, by the way), and Rockland had a boat landing, it makes sense that this landing would be the landmark or starting point for measuring anything along the river by miles. It also makes sense that anything called a "point" would be, well..."pointy".

Just at the base of the Coyote Wall is a jutting point that sticks out into the Columbia. It happens to be almost exactly 15 miles from where the landing at Rockland was. Further, research by Klickitat County historian and researcher Ralph Brown has identified a very early settlement along the shore at what is now Rowland Lake, occupied long before Mr. Rowland ever lived there and graced the place with his name. So, to me...this is enough confirmation to declare that Rowland Lake is the likely location of the original Gilmer Homestead, within a reasonable degree of confidence anyhow.

The Gilmers would leave this location in 1871 and settle in what is now called the Gilmer Valley, which is marked on today's maps as "Gilmer". After William Gilmer died in 1881, Betsey remarried once again to a man named Stephen Whitcomb, the original owner and builder of the Whitcomb-Cole cabin (pictured) which now sits at the headquarters of the Conboy Lake Wildlife Refuge in a restored state and is opened for visitors to enter and have a look.

The same year the Gilmers moved to the Gilmer Valley, Sarah and her husband, along with three children, moved to Puget Sound at were the first settlers at Lakebay, giving that place its name, and that is where she'd raise a total of 12 children.