Fishers Landing (Images of America)

Fishers Landing boasted many of Clark County's earliest legislators and power brokers. Men like Solomon W. Fisher, William M. Simmons, Silas D. Maxon, Joel Knight, and Henry M. Knapp—family men who came by wagon train and settled where the land was rich—established Clark County's first roads, schools, and post offices. The men of Fishers Landing and their allies served multiple terms in the Washington Territorial Legislature, House, and Council. When Washington became a state in 1889, two area sons, Samuel S. Cook and Hannibal Blair, served in the first state legislature. The soil at Fishers Landing and on the plain produced abundantly, enabling the families who farmed it to invest in warehouses, wharfage, railroads, agribusiness, lumber, quarry rock, and other forms of enterprise. The people of Fishers Landing, and on Mill Plain, mixed ideas of good governance with fervent territorial politics and the good life of family and the family farm.

Longtime resident and author Richenda Fairhurst is a member of the Camas-Washougal and Clark County Historical Societies and a graduate of Washington State University in Vancouver. This Fishers Landing retrospective is possible thanks to the generosity of those who lent their expertise, personal stories, and family photographs.