Claquato

Claquato lost the county seat in one night. It had held Lewis County's courthouse since 1862, on land given by Lewis Hawkins Davis; the board spells him Louis. When the Northern Pacific laid its line through the river bottom in 1874 and missed the hill, citizens of Saundersville, soon renamed Chehalis, came one evening and carried the county's books and records off to a courthouse of their own. The town was struck from the county rolls in 1902. Its 1858 church still stands on the hill, the oldest standing church building in Washington.

What the plaque says

Claquato This pioneer town founded in 1853 on the donation claim of Louis H. Davis, once was the county seat and an important stop-off for travelers between the Columbia River and Puget Sound. The sturdy little church, built in 1858 with hand-forged nails and lumber sawed in a water-powered mill, doubled as a school--Claquato Academy. The bronze bell in the belfry came around Cape Horn from Boston in 1857. In the 1870s, when the railroad by-passed Claquato, most of the town moved 3 miles east to Chehalis.

Where it stands