Until the 1930s, there was only a rough plank road from Ilwaco, a photograph of which decorates the house's upstairs hall. The women hardly left at all - when the men left on official duty, their wives were expected to take care of the facilities. Household chores had to be done on a schedule, with washing only on a certain day of the week. That way of life ended in the mid-1950s, when the Coast Guard automated the North Head lighthouse. For a time, crew at the nearby Coast Guard station used the houses, and the parks department assumed use in the 1970s.
Many people drive under Fort Columbia without knowing it.
Highway 101 passes through a tunnel two miles east of Chinook. On the hill above is a neat village of orderly wooden structures built in 1902. The fort's guns protected the mouth of the Columbia River until 1947. Park staff live in some of the yellow houses with green trim, and now the public may rent one, the original steward's house, which is on the hillside above the gun emplacements. The downstairs features pressed tin ceilings.