In 1891 the main streets in the West End had been planked.  In that same year the Hotel Willapa was erected on the block between Harrison and Jackson streets, and the street named Broadway was planked from the river to the top of Alta Vista.  The east and west ends of town competed fiercely as to which would be the commercial center of the town.  But a series of fires, mainly destroying business houses of the east end resulted in the gradual loss of business in that district. This along with the failure of the completed Hotel Willapa to open, ultimately caused the West End to be the downtown business center.

     In 1892 the county seat was removed from Oysterville and relocated at South Bend.  The railroad was completed to South Bend in 1893, but was never extended to Yakima, which doomed South Bend's hopes of being a major port for western Washington.

     The economy of the county and of South Bend declined severely in the next few years because of the over-harvesting of oysters, abandonment of the Chehalis-Yakima railroad link, and over-investment, the consequences of  which  were made even  worse by the mid-nineties national financial crisis.

     In the early 1900's cash was again available for promotion and building of mills.  The neighboring town of Raymond was just beginning and the Raymond Land Company welcomed such industry.  But ironically, while South Bend still had the advantage of better combined transportation and accessibility by water and rail as well, the better topographic site for a town, it now had no industrial sites available, the Land Company having given away the industrial waterfront sites to the railroad. Therefore, the second economic surge in the area occurred in Raymond, and its population soon became larger than that of South Bend, whose numbers had declined to about 2300 in 1920.

     The need for spruce and other timber in World War I revived the railroad and timber industries in the Willapa Bay area. Following the demise of the transplanted eastern oyster which had been successfully introduced to the bay in the early 1900's, the introduction of the Japanese oyster in the 1930's  revitalized the oyster industry.

     South Bend still had the natural advantage of the navigable river, the rail connection, and the timber, fishing and oyster industries providing support for its population.  For these reasons, the town survived, with the highway transportation ultimately replacing the railroad.