It was wonderful to learn that a Coast Guard family invested their sweat and toil to restore access to the shoreline in Deadman’s Cove. If there’s a Coast Guard award for outstanding volunteerism, let’s nominate them for it.

Although Cape Disappointment State Park is among Washington’s most popular outdoor destinations, it contains (or borders, in the case of the cove) many places where a person can truly get away from it all and commune with nature.

The U.S. government actually owns much of what we think of as the “state” park. Washington State Parks runs it under a more or less permanent agreement. But the cove is still actively managed federal property — someone with a strong enough arm could just about toss a baseball from the ocean beach inside the cove to the Coast Guard station on Baker Bay. So the Coast Guard was understandably squeamish about civilians scrambling down the steep slope between the trail and the cove.

Since it requires a moderately strenuous walk to get to the cove from the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, many never have experienced what must be among the state’s most splendid sights. Park interpretive specialist Jon Schmidt once observed, “this small and scenic beach reminds me of a setting for Peter Pan and his friends.”

I hadn’t been down to the beach there in around 20 years, when our family had a picnic when my daughter and nieces were little girls. A few years later, I was walking by myself to Cape Disappointment Lighthouse and spied a big glass fishing float washed up on the sand. Candidly, I’ll always regret obeying the “no trespassing” signs posted at the time and not going down to get it.

It’s worth noting that there actually is another Deadman’s Cove (sometimes called Deadman’s Hollow) elsewhere in the park, though it’s now landlocked near the northern end of Benson Beach. Charlie Mulvey, a famous peninsula painter and all-around nice guy, had sort of a semi-secret trail to it from the woods to the east, but I suspect that path may have been destroyed by a landslide.

So who was the “dead man”?

“Some names, like Deadman’s Cove or Deadman’s Hollow don’t specify who exactly was lost — in these two cases chances are there have been multiple personalities washed ashore in these locations,” Schmidt wrote. Not only did drowned sailors wash ashore following shipwrecks, but the open gillnet fishing boats that plied the Columbia River estuary were notoriously dangerous in the era before gasoline engines, sometimes being swamped by the sea and dooming two-man crews.

Looking ahead to next week’s Chinook Observer, we’re working on a story about the extent to which Pacific County’s finances rely on fines and penalties.

We’re also continuing to follow the post-season adventures of local basketball teams, in addition to preparing a full slate of local news and features.

If you already subscribe, thank you very much. If not, I’d sure appreciate it you would.