Map showing Pacific City: This detail from an 1853 map of Western Washington prepared for the U.S. Congress shows the site of Pacific City. It is beautifully rendered, obviously by an accomplished draftsman, but was based on partial and sometimes inaccurate information, for example showing a two-pronged peninsula and omitting Long Island.

Dr. Elijah White (1806-1879)

Dr. Elijah White of Ithaca New York was, by all accounts charismatic, opinionated and headstrong. Here in Pacific County, he is remembered as our first real estate promoter. However, White did not venture west with real estate in mind and, although it is for his ill-fated Pacific City that he is remembered here, his influence, pro and con, was felt throughout Oregon Territory.

After completing his medical training at Geneva Medical College in 1836, he responded to the call by missionary societies for physicians to aid Native people in the Oregon Country. White, his wife Sarepta, and their two children traveled from New York to Hawaii and Astoria, arriving at the Willamette Mission by river canoe in May 1837.

Enroute, White had taken note of the deep water then prevailing in Baker’s Bay and the protection behind the headlands of Cape Disappointment that made this a natural place for ships to drop anchor after entering the Columbia. Although, he continued on to his Oregon assignment, he didn’t forget the promising possibilities.

As it turned out, White and the Mission were not a good fit. By 1841, after a falling out with the mission leader, White and his family (minus two children who had drowned in Oregon) returned East with the full intention of staying there. However, White plans changed abruptly the following year when he was appointed sub-Indian agent for the U. S. government in the “Oregon Country,” as the vast area from (present-day) California to Canada was then called.

Though he made several trips East to report to Congress on matters of the Oregon Provisional Government, his dream of establishing a deep-water port city on the north side of the Columbia was never far from his thoughts. While visiting his home town of Ithaca, he persuaded several acquaintances to emigrate to the Pacific Coast with him. Each invested $100 in the venture which began in 1849 with an overland trek across the continent to the headlands of Cape Disappointment.

On March 22, 1849, White filed for a Donation Land Claim on Baker Bay. He had a plat drawn by Washington Hall subdividing his holdings and then advertised the availability of lots for up to $2,000 apiece. Named “Pacific City,” the map showed a large central “Public Square” with several hundred building lots neatly arranged around it. Broadway, Market, Commercial and Front were among the many planned thoroughfares.

Assisting in White’s promotions, J.D. Holman of Oregon City not only invested in Pacific City property, but purchased from New York, a pre-fabricated, fully equipped and furnished, 60-room hotel for $28,000. Nevertheless, by the end of the first year one observer noted: “…Pacific City is situated just back of Cape Disappointment on a side hill so steep that buildings can hardly stand. One store, one tavern, and three or four dwellings comprise the city.”

However mixed the report about White’s dream city, the U.S. Pacific City Post Office was established there on Dec. 26, 1850 with Holman serving as first postmaster. Soon after, five citizens successfully petitioned the Oregon Territorial Legislature for the creation of Pacific County out of the southwest corner of Lewis County. On Feb. 3, 1851, their request was granted; Pacific City was soon named the County Seat and the first Commissioners’ meetings took place in Holman’s hotel.

However, less than three years after the first eager immigrants had set foot on Pacific City soil, property owners were notified by federal authorities that 640 acres had been newly reserved for a military reservation within which Fort Canby would be located. The townsite of Pacific City was an “intrusion” that would have to be removed. On Feb. 26, 1852, occupants were ordered to vacate the site. Disgruntled settlers, most recouping none of their investment, soon moved north to Shoalwater Bay or east to the mining settlements of Idaho.

White spent his remaining years in San Francisco defending his character by publishing pamphlets containing letters of support for his work in Oregon — mostly from people who had only heard of his exploits from White, himself. Though his wife Sarepta and two sons joined him for a short time, she subsequently wrote a friend that she had “committed the unpardonable crime” and obtained a divorce from White on the grounds of non-support and desertion (leaving adultery out) for the sake of the children. White died in 1879.