Doghole Port: Stillwater Cove

Aerial photograph of doghole port location at Fisk Mill
The lumber chute location at Stillwater Cove is indicated by the yellow pin. (Credit: Google Earth)

An 1880 history of Salt Point Township relates that Christian Friedrich Ruoff was one of the early settlers at Stillwater Cove, arriving there by the fall of 1851. Mr. Ruoff died in 1854 shortly after his wife, Francesca, and three children joined him on the property. Francesca assumed the family’s leadership and built a lumber chute there by the late 1860s along with a private elementary school that she ran into the 1870s.

Stillwater Cove’s very small but sheltered anchorage meant that the single chute on the cove’s northwest side could be used year-round. This chute loaded small schooners with cord wood, posts, railroad ties, and tan bark for San Francisco. While there was never a town located at Stillwater Cove, the doghole port was active shipping out 249 wood loads between 1868 and 1874.

Today, the remains of Stillwater Cove’s lumber chute are on private property. The 2016 Doghole Ports Survey team was fortunate to meet the owners who graciously permitted them access to their property. The private residence at this location occupies the same position as the lumber chute, and its construction obscured many of the upland features of the loading apparatus except for the access trails. These are now used as the residence’s driveways. The foreshore port features at Stillwater Cove are consistent with those at other locations and included iron ring bolts, pins, and wire rope. In addition to the hardware, numerous rebates in the cliffside rocks for the chute support legs provided information on the chute’s arrangement as no illustrations or photographs of the chute have been uncovered.

-- Deborah Marx, Maritime Archaeologist, Maritime Heritage Program, Office of National Marine Sanctuaries

 

Doghole Port photo

The U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey T-sheet from 1876 depicts one lumber chute at Stillwater Cove.

Credit: NOAA’s Historical Map & Chart Collection

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Doghole Port photo

View of the anchorage from where the Stillwater Cove chute projected out into the cove.

Credit: NOAA ONMS and California State Parks

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Doghole Port photo

California State Parks archaeologist Scott Green and Sonoma State University graduate student Jason Field record an eye bolt.

Credit: James P. Delgado, NOAA ONMS

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Doghole Port photo

A square rebate in a foreshore boulder served as a footing for one of the lumber chute’s legs.

Credit: NOAA ONMS and California State Parks

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Doghole Port photo

A well-preserved iron ring bolt used to guide the lumber chute or to stabilize vessels while loading.

Credit: NOAA ONMS and California State Parks

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Doghole Port photo

An iron eye bolt with wire rope secured Stillwater Cove’s spindly trough chute against the forces incurred during vessel loading and battering by wind and waves.

Credit: NOAA ONMS and California State Parks

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