An early pioneer, Dr. Charles Green Caples migrated across the Oregon Trail as a boy. After his marriage to Lucinda McBride, he studied medicine in Portland and passed the examination by the Board of Physicians for his degree. In 1870 he constructed his two story home on the same spot where his father Joseph Caples built his log cabin in 1846. The family lived on this land until 1959, when Dell Caples Houghton, a daughter of Charles and Lucinda Caples and a member of Mount St. Helens Chapter, Oregon State Society Daughters of the American Revolution, willed the house and property to the OSSDAR as a museum.