FORKS — A monument to the October 1808 wreck of the Sv. Nikolai will be dedicated at 1 p.m. Saturday.
Although the storm-driven shipwreck was on Rialto Beach, the monument is at 5333 Upper Hoh Road, just past the Hard Rain Cafe on the way to the Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center.
It marks the area where a handful of survivors built a refuge after escaping from the Quileute and Hoh tribes.
The dedication of the 24-foot-by-14-foot octagon-shaped structure built of old-growth cedar and metal, and surrounding picnic tables and parking spaces, marks the end of a project begun in 2011 by Bill Sperry, 74, a Forks resident and businessman who worked with volunteer labor and donated funds.
Through interpretive signs detailing the history of the Nikolai, the monument also tells the tale of the first European woman on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Anna Petrovna Bulygin, the 18-year-old wife of Nikolai ship Capt. Nikolai Isaakovich Bulygin, was captured by the Quileute and gifted to the Makah.
The land for the monument was donated by two families of Petersons — Stan and Linda, and Gary and Charlotte, Sperry said.
