Is a long-dead whale buried on Livingston Mountain in east Clark County?
The short answer is yes. The long answer involves a series of events that eventually became a dimly remembered local legend, passed on from generation to generation. The story of Ethelbert the whale (or Oswald, to people on the Washington side of the Columbia River) has lived a kind of cultural half-life — it never fully disappears, but it’s never fully vivid, either.
“I’m captivated by this weird loss of memory that the community has sometimes,” said Brad Richardson, the executive director of the Clark County Historical Museum. “It’s like, how did you forget a whale? It’s like misplacing an elephant.”…