Fort Stevens State Park

The board stands on ground the Clatsop called Klaát-sop, the village at Point Adams for which the nation is named. In March 1829 the Hudson's Bay Company ship William and Ann broke up on the bar with all hands, and rumor at Fort Vancouver held that the Clatsop had killed survivors for the cargo. Months later a company force came downriver behind the armed schooner Cadboro, shelled the village, killed villagers and carried off the salvage. The rumor was false. Tsin-is-tum, a Clatsop woman who lived into the 1900s, said her father was killed and her sister blinded.

What the plaque says

Oregon History Fort Stevens Clatsop people controlled trade on this side of the lower Columbia River for generations. Visitors described the Clatsop's bustling communities. The Hudson's Bay Company attacked a village here in 1829 believing untrue rumors of Clatsop hostility. Settlers soon began claiming nearby lands. Clatsop chiefs signed a treaty with the U.S. in 1851, reserving land, but the U.S. Senate never ratified the treaty. The 1855 Oregon Coast Treaty was also unratified, but reservations were created for coastal tribes. Fort Stevens began in 1863, as a Civil War fortification. A Japanese submarine's shelling of Fort Stevens was the only WWII attack on a U.S. mainland military installation.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Clatsop — 6.4 mi
  The log post the Corps of Discovery named for its neighbors, and left to the Clatsop headman Coboway five days after stealing one of his people's canoes.
• Astoria Column — 7.3 mi
  A railroad's 1926 monument to its own route, wrapped in a 525-foot spiral of Oregon history that ends with the train pulling into Astoria.
• Haystack Rock — 22 mi
  A 235-foot sea stack made of lava that ran down the Columbia from the far side of the state, now a nesting rock for tufted puffins.

More markers nearby

• Tsunami - Seaside — 15 mi
• Ecola — 20 mi