BRUCEPORT

Early Shoalwater Bay community located on the shoreline between South Bend and Bay Center, 1851-1895.

Before the arrival of white settlers the site was an Indian village called "Wa-Hoot-San" or "Hwa-hots." The village was sparsely populated when the crew of the schooner Robert Bruce was stranded there in 1851. The crew was preparing to haul oysters to market in San Francisco when a disgruntled cook set the schooner on fire and burned it to the keel. The resulting camp was first known as the "Bruce Boys Camp."

In 1851, John W. Champ, who filed a Donation Land Claim on a portion of the village site, hired Washington Hall to survey a townsite to be called "Whilapi City." According to James G. Swan, the settlers voted to name the town "Bruceville" in 1854. The name Champ proposed for the settlement was ignored. Bruceville was the county seat of Chehalis County (renamed Grays Harbor County in 1915) from 1854-1860. A post office was established April 29, 1858, and the town name was officially changed to Bruceport. The office was closed July 11, 1893.

In the 1870s Bruceport had 25 families, two hotels, two stores and a school. Oyster harvesting was the main source of income. The settlement failed by the 1890s, a victim of several seasons of poor oyster harvesting and severe shoreline erosion.

An historical marker, one mile south of the townsite on Highway 101, tells the fascinating story of Bruceport's beginning.