With the help of her family and the entire membership of the Pacific County Historical Society, the Spring 1983 edition (Volume XVIII, No.1) of The Sou’wester was dedicated to the quarterly’s founder, Ruth Dixon, to surprise and honor her for her years of service to the society.

Ruth Dixon (1906 – 2001)

One of my greatest regrets is that I never had an opportunity to meet Ruth Dixon. Yet, I almost feel I knew her; I run across fascinating notes and bits of information from her in my files — not written to me, but to my mother and to my Uncle Willard in answer to a question about Oysterville or family history. Or, sometimes, it’s just a bit of historic trivia that she thought would interest them. Dixon was a local historian extraordinaire. I don’t think there has ever been anyone quite like her or anyone who contributed as much to our body of knowledge concerning local history.

Ruth (Emma Ruth Nupp Dixon) was well into her 50s by the time she became immersed in Pacific County history. Although she had lived in Raymond since her family moved there when she was but a year old, and although she had graduated from Raymond High School, had worked as a secretary for a local insurance company, and had married Harold Charles Dixon, also of Raymond, the only local history that had ever caught her attention were the stories of her neighbor Ray Wheaton of an old pioneer family. She found that she couldn’t get enough of his accounts of old roads, old bridges, and the lifestyle of the people who had first settled the area.

Although she first became a dues-paying member of the Pacific County Historical Society in 1962, it wasn’t until 1963, after the death of her long-time employer, that Ruth found her own history calling. That year, she began working for the Pacific County library system, straightening out the Raymond Library’s history files. Years later in a newspaper interview she said, “All the library’s clippings were packed in cardboard boxes stored in the basement.” And at a time before the library had acquired a copy machine, Ruth spent thousands of hours copying and typing information, cataloguing newspaper clippings, obituaries, student history papers, and filling a file cabinet with information about Pacific County’s rich past.

From that time forward, Ruth immersed herself in the history of Southwest Washington. Her column “Echoes of the Past” first appeared over Ruth’s byline in the Raymond Herald and Advertiser in May 1965 and was frequently printed in other local newspapers, as well. Two years later, she added another column, “News of the Sou’wester” and, in 1968, still another called “Museum Musings.”

“I don’t know anything about editing,” Ruth once said. “I know what I like. I read what others are doing and try to do better.” Her readers undoubtedly disagreed with her as did and the American Association of State and Local History when, in 1967, they selected the Sou’wester as “one of the ten best quarterlies” in the nation.

Her work as curator of the county museum began in 1970 when she approached Don Cox about using the windows of his South Bend Pharmacy for a museum display. As she later pointed out, “As soon as people knew we had a museum going, they would start leaving old items for us… it just grew and grew!” And although the board of directors never seemed to find tine to officially name Dixon as museum director, they deferred to her from the beginning.

“Few could find the time to devote to the work and none had her stamina,” according to the tribute paid to her in the Spring 1983 Sou’wester. That entire issue of the magazine she had founded was lovingly devoted to “Ruth Dixon, A Goldmine of Pacific County History.” The magazine (now in its 68th year) continues on, as does Ruth’s incredible contribution to the historic record of Pacific County,