Some of the old-timers around here — especially those in the oyster business — know that there used to be an Oysterville, Oregon. Google says it still exists and it even shows up on their maps. But those old oystermen also know that the “other” Oysterville — the Oregon one — has been under water for some years now. When Tucker Wachsmuth tried to locate the town back in the 1960s, he found only the derelict remains of the Oysterville Hotel (or so he was told) perched precariously along the banks of Yaquina River.

In my family, there is a great story about that “other” Oysterville — the one down the coast 180 miles give or take. The story had its beginnings back in 1852 when my great-grandfather Robert Espy and his younger brother, Tom, parted company toward the western end of the Oregon Trail. Tom had decided to go south to California; Robert was continuing on to Oregon Territory.

During the years that followed, Robert settled on the North Beach Peninsula, helped found the town of Oysterville, which shortly became the seat of Pacific County, served as a major in the Oysterville Militia, married schoolteacher Julia Jefferson and, by 1884, had sired the first five of his eight children and had oyster interests in Shoalwater and San Francisco Bays. On this particular day, he was seated in the lobby of an Astoria hotel, along with a number of others, waiting for the ship just beyond the big double doors to begin boarding for the voyage to San Francisco.

Two Major Espys

“Is there a Major Espy of Oysterville present?” called out the concierge. As Robert approached the front desk, another man strode up beside him — Maj. Thomas Espy of Oysterville, Oregon! Apparently, Tom had wandered north from the California gold fields in the late fifties and for more than a quarter of a century had lived less than two hundred miles from his elder brother — each unaware that the other was even alive.

For all of my lifetime (and more) the story of the two Oystervilles has been just that — a story — and I grew up and grew old knowing that our Oysterville in Pacific County, Washington was very special, indeed. It was the only community by that name in the whole wide world. Until last week!

That’s when the New York Times ran a story about a certain Mr. Pigulevsky who owns a farm called “The Oysters of Scythia” located along the Black Sea coast in Ukraine. There he raises one kind of oyster, a Japanese variety called Crassostrea gigas — the very same oyster that is raised in Willapa Bay and is known here as a “Pacific.”

Free oysters for soldiers

Early in the Russo-Ukrainian War when the fighting was close by, Mr. Pigulevsky had to close his business for a time but, said the NYT, “he reopened it after Ukrainian troops repelled a nearby Russian advance that had threatened to swallow his business, along with a large chunk of southern Ukraine. In appreciation, he has decreed that soldiers and their families can eat all the oysters their stomachs can hold for free.”

“To put more of a buffer between his oyster farm and the fighting,” continued the NYT article, “Mr. Pigulevsky is moving it across the estuary to the Odesa Region side, where he has also built a small café and beach resort called Oysterville” — Ойстервіль in Ukrainian.

So! Another Oysterville half a world away! I, for one, wish them Godspeed. And wouldn’t it be grand if Pacific County reached out and asked the Ukrainian Oysterville to become our Oysterville’s sister city? Well, maybe not “city” exactly… but you know what I mean.