Qualla: Moclips, Washington

Moclips, Washington: Introduction

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0. The hotel was three stories high, a block long, and stood twelve feet from the Pacific Ocean. By 1914, there was nothing left of it. Moclips, a tiny community on Washington's North Beach coast in Grays Harbor County, once dreamed of becoming a major resort destination -- the kind of place where the Northern Pacific Railway would deliver trainloads of vacationers to a 270-room beachside palace. The dream lasted less than a decade. Storms, fire, and the relentless erosion of the coastline reduced Moclips to fragments, and then to memory, and then to a census-designated place with a population of 211. What remains is a handful of houses, a museum, a Quinault name whose meaning scholars still debate, and a stretch of wild beach that refuses to be tamed.

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Image: Chris Light | CC BY-SA 4.0

Moclips, Washington: A Name the Scholars Cannot Agree On

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photo by Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 4.0. Even the origin of the word Moclips is contested. According to historian Edmond S. Meany, the name comes from a Quinault word describing a place where girls were sent as they approached puberty -- a site of cultural significance, a threshold between childhood and adulthood at the...

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Image: Photo by Joe Mabel | CC BY-SA 4.0

Moclips, Washington: Dr. Lycan's Grand Gamble

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photo by Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 4.0. Steve Grover homesteaded near Moclips in 1862, but the town did not truly begin until the Northern Pacific Railway completed a line to the coast in 1905. That same year, Dr. Edward Lycan built the first Moclips Beach Hotel -- a two-story, 150-room beachside resort designed to cap...

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Image: Photo by Joe Mabel | CC BY-SA 4.0

Moclips, Washington: What the Storms Took

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photo by Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1911, a series of violent storms struck the North Beach coast and began washing Moclips away. The Moclips Beach Hotel -- Lycan's enormous second creation -- was battered into pieces. By December 1913, another storm took out the middle wing. In January 1914, what remained colla...

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Image: Photo by Joe Mabel | CC BY-SA 4.0

Moclips, Washington: Ghosts, Grunge, and What Remains

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geeky Randy, CC BY-SA 4.0. Today, 211 people live in the Moclips CDP, which includes the residential area of Sunset Beach. Washington State Route 109 passes through on its way to Taholah, nine miles north, and Hoquiam, thirty-one miles to the southeast. The town preserves its naturally wooded areas to bloc...

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Image: Geeky Randy | CC BY-SA 4.0