Hotel · Tokeland, Washington · Built 1885; wings 1899 and 1910
Tokeland Hotel
A plain frame farmhouse of 1885 on Toke Point at the mouth of Willapa Bay, enlarged by William and Lizzie Kindred into a seaside inn in 1899 and 1910; among the oldest resort hotels in Washington.
History
George and Charlotte Brown settled on Toke Point in 1858, when its tideflats were thick with native oysters and its only other residents were Shoalwater Bay people; the point was named for their headman, Chief Toke. Their daughter Elizabeth, Lizzie, grew up with Native children as her companions and later gathered a notable collection of baskets and beadwork. In 1880 she married William Kindred, son of an early Columbia River pilot, who had come to build the North Cove lifesaving station. In December 1884 he bought his father-in-law's homestead and its dairy and oyster business, and in 1885 the couple built a two-story farmhouse of lumber brought by boat from South Bend.
Travelers kept arriving, so in 1899 the Kindreds added a wing and opened as the Kindred Inn, soon renamed the Tokeland Hotel; William was postmaster from 1898 to 1915, with the post office in the hotel. A second wing in 1910 gave the building its present shape. Lumber families from Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay, the 'sawdust aristocracy', built summer cottages nearby, and guests came by steamer from South Bend for oysters, razor clams and crab, golf and shooting. The nomination notes the hotel reportedly offered more than food during Prohibition. In 1933 the Kindreds' daughter Maude moved the golf clubhouse beside the hotel as a tavern. Lizzie died in 1931, Maude in 1939 and William in 1943. Later operators ran it mostly as a restaurant; after a closure in the late 1960s and early 1970s, new owners began restoring it, and it was listed on the National Register in 1978.
“The leisurely resort atmosphere that developed at the inn on Toke Point was in noted contrast to the bawdy recreation offered by saloons and brothels in Aberdeen, Raymond, and South Bend.”
Architecture
The hotel is a two-story wood-frame building that grew in stages into a C-shape: the 1885 farmhouse of about 40 by 65 feet with a brick fireplace in its north wall, the 1899 wing that made an L, and a 1910 wing of similar size, when gas lighting and a second fireplace went in. The exterior is shiplap, painted barn red in 1974, under a gabled roof originally of split shakes. Inside were rough-sawn plank walls covered with burlap and wallpaper. The east porches facing the bay were absorbed into an enlarged dining room in the 1920s and 1930s, turning the old front into the rear. There are about thirty rooms, each with at least one large window, and much original oak furniture and dark-stained wainscoting.
What to look for
- The C-shaped plan built up in 1885, 1899 and 1910
- Shiplap siding painted barn red
- Dining room extended over the old east porches
- Hand-painted dining room murals and wainscoting
- The relocated clubhouse next door
Setting
The hotel stands back from Kindred Avenue on Toke Point, a low windswept peninsula at the north entrance to Willapa Bay, with a lawn running down toward the bay on the northeast. The old clubhouse, later a tavern, stands to the north. Tokeland is a small, scattered community with the Shoalwater Bay Indian Reservation nearby and the Pacific beaches a short drive west.
Timeline
- 1858George and Charlotte Brown settle on Toke Point
- 1885Kindreds build the farmhouse that forms the hotel's core
- 1899Wing added; opens as the Kindred Inn
- 1910Second wing completes the C-shaped plan
- 1933Clubhouse moved beside the hotel as a tavern
- 1943Death of William Kindred ends family ownership
- 1978Listed on the National Register
Where sources differ
- The nomination says William Kindred bought a 900-acre homestead; Wikipedia says the Browns homesteaded 1,400 acres.
- Stories of a ghost named Charley and other hauntings are local lore.
- The claim to be Washington's oldest resort hotel is the hotel's own; the nomination says 'one of the oldest'.
