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Walking through the doors of the Claquato Church really is like stepping back in time.
The room is empty save for a dozen white wooden pews, a pair of organs and a modest platform at the front for the pulpit. The wood-framed windows have the hazy, glazy look of age. The walls are covered with a patterned paper out of another era, with kerosene lanterns on both sides.
Some of the first settlers in Lewis County built the church in 1858 as the hamlet of Claquato grew quickly on a spot overlooking the Chehalis River. A few years later, the railroad chose the other side of the valley and the energy of growth moved east to Chehalis. Claquato sank into an obscurity that, happily, preserved this church like a forgotten photograph.
Just about the only remnant of pioneer life that is older than this church is the cemetery next door, which had seen its first burial (a child, sadly) two years before the church was built.
For more than a century and a half, the church and the cemetery have endured under separate ownership.
The cemetery, although a place for the dead, is actually full of life. Most of us have attended burial services there or have honored our fallen soldiers at the Memorial Day ceremonies it hosts each year. As kids, perhaps we looked at its enormous “Pioneer Tree” and imagined days gone by.
On the other hand, the Claquato Church, once a home for its community’s vibrant spiritual life and children who studied in Lewis County School Dist. No. 2, has been vacant and silent. There are vanishingly few chances for the public to step through its doors into our shared past.
This week, ye olde village of Claquato was big news, as the Lewis County Commission announced that it was putting the historic church up for sale. The church had been given to the county in 1948, decrepit and abandoned, for safekeeping. Volunteers from the American Legion in 1953 fixed it up.
Now the church has fallen into decrepitude again. It’s not falling down, but it’s showing its age. It has rot and leaks. Until workers from the Claquato Cemetery started keeping up the landscaping, bushes were brushing up against the building and blackberries were bountiful.
This week I had the chance to talk with the county about plans to transfer ownership into the hands of a new owner who has the vision, resources and energy to take care of the church.
That involves putting the church up for sale. A call for bids this week startled the community. Without knowledge that the Claquato Cemetery Board had a plan in place to revitalize the church, people were scared that a piece of pioneer history was going to be turned into a pizza parlor or worse.
A story today helps provide background. At the end of the month the county will open bids. Based on what the Claquato Cemetery Board has put together, it looks like the county will have at least one strong option to transfer this important property into the hands of a group that can take proper care of it. Perhaps there will be more bids received that are as good or better. It’s a well-defined process and all bids will be open for anyone to view.
There were legitimate questions raised this week about public involvement and the process used by the county to surplus the property.
I’m a strong supporter of good government, so I appreciate the spirit of those concerns.
I also am heartened by how many people were up in arms when they heard that this old church tucked in a quiet corner of the county was going to be sold.
Those are people who love our shared heritage. They are allies in the never-ending battle to remember and preserve our history. It’s a chance to bring back to life the pioneer spirit of the Claquato settlers who built that church together in 1858 and the war veterans who restored it in 1953. Our generation can show the same enterprising energy.
Whoever ends up successfully purchasing the church, whether the Claquato Cemetery Board or another group with a plan for success, will need lots of support from the public in the church’s rehabilitation and revitalization. I hope everyone who was fired up about the church being sold will volunteer to help the new owners save and celebrate it.
If it ends up being the Claquato Cemetery, it will be bringing together two neighbors that have long had close ties.
In the cemetery board office this week I counted four different paintings of the Claquato Church hanging on the walls and eight more historical photos of it.
A Bible given to the church in 1860 is on display at the cemetery office, as is another Bible given to the church’s Sunday school a few decades later.
And during a Thursday visit to the church, as cemetery board members walked through the original pews, they looked at generations of heritage in the small wooden building.
Angie Vlach, who works as a financial advisor, joined the Claquato Cemetery Board a few years ago. I watched her read a poem on the wall, written decades before she was born, about the “little church of a dim and by-gone day.” Nearby hangs a history written after the last major renovation, in 1953.
“May future generations protect and preserve this historic structure,” Vlach read aloud, then added her enthusiastic commentary: “There you go. That's what we're trying to do!”
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Brian Mittge is a community enthusiast who has written for The Chronicle since 2000 as a reporter, editor and columnist. He can be reached at brianmittge@hotmail.com.
