Seeing the Whale

NPS

Just after Christmas 1805, word came to Fort Clatsop that a large whale had washed ashore and died on the beach near a Tillamook village. The weather didn’t cooperate and it was finally on January 6, 1806 when Captain Clark departed with about 12 men and Charbonneau, Sacagawea, and Jean Baptiste in two canoes out of Youngs Bay and up the comparatively placid Skipanon River. Then they traveled by foot to the saltmakers' camp, and over Tillamook Head.

By the time the party arrived at what we today know as Ecola Beach, the whale's bones had been picked clean, and the native people were seen, according to Clark journals, "boiling whale in a trough of about 20 gallons with hot Stones, and the oyle they put into a Canoe." Clark succeeded in bargaining for about 300 pounds of whale blubber and a few gallons of oil. "Small as this Stock is I prise it highly.”

This 9-foot-long metal sculpture, named simply, “Whale,” is located at Whale Park near the north end of downtown Cannon Beach, Oregon. The sculpture commemorates the visit by Captain Clark and party.