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The Goldendale Sentinel, Goldendale, WA., July 4, 1963, page 1

BLOCKHOUSE PRESERVATION URGED BY PARKS OFFICIAL

Lloyd R. Bell, Olympia, supervisor of interpretive services for Washington State Parks Department, was a Goldendale visitor last Thursday. While here he conferred with officers of the Klickitat Historical Society on the future of the Klickitat Blockhouse, located at Brooks Park. While Bell and the parks board had gone on record to take no part in preserving the old structure, which is in the way of a road-widening project, he did express concern that it could not be preserved in some form. "The number of blockhouses in the state has diminished to a very few," he said, "and they represent a primary means of interpreting history of the state of the era in which they were built." (The local one was built about 1856.) Members of the county society said they felt there was little of the original structure left and it was hardly worth saving. However after talking to Bell they agreed to investigate farther a possible place for the remains to be moved (if the parks department could not be persuaded to make a new site available for it at Brooks), with the idea it might be rebuilt later. In a letter reporting to the state supervisor of parks, Bell said: "I expressed the position of the commission taken in 1962 that the responsibility for the preservation of this block house rested with the Klickitat Historical Society. However, I said that I would be willing to assist them in any way that I could in saving this block house, since there are only six remaining block houses of the 1858 period in the state of Washington. It was agreed that I would mark the Blockhouse logs with code numbers (which I did) in order that if it became necessary to dismantle the building it could be reconstructed from the code numbers and a plan which I would provide the Historical Society. The trustees of the Historical Society agreed to make further effort to find a place to put the building."