Ilwaco was founded around 1848 and incorporated in 1890. The major occupation was fishing and in the seafood industry. At one time, Ilwaco had a bad reputation because of the gillnet wars fought there from 1884 to 1910. Gillnet and trap fishermen fought over fishing ground rights, sometimes to the death. Fishing was often done with a seine, a large fishing net that hangs vertically in the water by attaching weights along the bottom edge and floats along the top. Seine fishing offered the advantage of being able to net fish without having to be concerned with the visibility of the nets in the water, as the seine hangs from the top of the water to the bottom of the river, lake or bay.

Willapa Bay, located on the southwest Pacific coast of Washington near Ilwaco, is a large inlet of salt water separated from the Pacific Ocean by the Long Beach Peninsula. The bay is fairly shallow, with half of the volume of water inside it entering and leaving with every tide. It is bordered by several smaller towns and unincorporated communities such as Raymond, South Bend, and Tokeland. After the depletion in the 19th century of the natural oyster beds in California and Oregon, Willapa Bay became one of the nation's largest commercial producer of oysters.

In 1879, Simon Benson, a Norwegian immigrant from Wisconsin, settled in Oregon and bought timber lands in the vicinity of St. Helens and the lower stretches of the Columbia River, down river of Portland. Benson was among the first timbermen to use steam donkey engines and small railroads instead of oxen teams to haul logs to water. Another innovation of Benson’s was his famous “Benson rafts," developed as an alternative to the high costs of railroad or ocean barge transportation along the Pacific Coast. After finalizing the initial design, Benson hired John A. Festabend to supervise construction of the cigar-shaped rafts, which were assembled in the calm waters of the Wallace Slough, near Clatskanie, Oregon. Benson rafts were the first ocean-worthy lumber rafts. These cigar-shaped assemblages of logs, held together tightly by stout chains. Benson’s rafts were transported the 1,100 miles to San Diego during the summer, arriving at his saw mill roughly 15 days after leaving Clatskanie. Between in 1906 and 1941, over 120 Benson rafts were sent to San Diego from the Columbia River, with only 4 lost to storm or fire during that time. More than half the time, the rafts were “deck loaded” with processed lumber like shingles, fence posts, poles and spurs to maximize profits. Benson’s mill in San Diego then sold the resultant lumber to the lucrative California market.