Ebey's Landing Administrative History

Chapter Three:
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF CENTRAL WHIDBEY ISLAND

Through the remainder of the nineteenth century, Euro-American settlers continued to be drawn to Whidbey Island because of its reputation as a "paradise of nature." Like the Indians before them, the first Euro-Americans settled along Penn Cove or on the rich loam of the island's prairies. The prairies, largely confined to central and north Whidbey, were taken first. Sending for friends and family, extended families often established multiple claims. Because they owned the choicest lands, these were the most successful farmers and the most stable residents on the island. Many of their original claims remain in agriculture today. [23]

In 1854 a newcomer to Whidbey Island, Calista Leach, described Penn Cove as "densely wooded with firs dripping down to the tide-regulated beaches, and along the shores Indian camps, often evidenced only by the canoes drawn up out of the reach of the tide." Gradually the Native Americans disappeared from the island after the treaties of 1855 gave whites title to western Washington. Until replaced by machines in the 1870s, some Indians continued to work on Euro-American farms, while others fished. Few retained access to the land in their own right, although a small settlement of Skagits remained for a time on Penn Cove. The majority left for the mainland. [24]

Euro-Americans who did not claim prairie lands carved additional farms from the forests or reclaimed marshland. Recognizing Penn Cove as a fine natural harbor, ship owners and traders, many of them from New England, filed claims around the rim of the cove. This prompted one historian to dub it the "Port of Sea Captains." Along the west end of Penn Cove, Captain Benjamin Barstow established the first "town" center on Whidbey Island by building a trading post there in the early 1850s. A short distance around the cove, Dr. Richard Lansdale platted the village of Coveland in 1852. Until Port Townsend ferry traffic was rerouted to Admiralty Head, travelers to Whidbey Island arrived at Ebey's Landing and proceeded on to Coveland. For thirty years the site of the county court, the town began to fade in the 1870s, overshadowed by Coupeville on Captain Thomas Coupe's claim on the south shore of the cove. Coupeville was more convenient than Coveland for farmers and the merchants who handled their trade. "Yankee entrepreneurs and Midwestern farmers" created a successful community. Merchants on Penn Cove logged their lands and shipped timber and finished Douglas fir spars to the mainland and to California. Although not formally platted until 1883, the county seat was relocated to Coupeville in 1881. The town, with its false-front shops strung along Front Street, took shape by 1890, and its population grew to between 300 and 400 by 1910, after which it remained stable for another half century. [25]

Two brief bunt notable speculative frenzies flared on Whidbey Island, sparked by false hopes of a railroad terminus in Coupeville. The first, begun in the late 1860s, anticipated the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Speculators built a few new hotels in Coupeville, but the railroad turned south to Tacoma, and the boom died by 1871. The second speculative flurry was far more ambitious. Between 1889 and 1891 promoters platted a number of townsites in expectation of the Great Northern Railway in Port Townsend. The new towns of Chicago and Brooklyn, platted on Keystone Spit in order to capture some of the anticipated trade, were inhabited but briefly. The town of San de Fuca, hastily erected across the island on the old Coveland site, evolved into a permanent community, with hotel, post office, and shops. However, its trade remained local, and it eventually lost its commercial independence to Coupeville. Of the era's boom towns, only Langley on southern Whidbey survives as a full-service community. [26]

Whidbey farmers raised crops for the market after 1860, in competition with farmers from California ad eastern Washington. In "three discernible shifts in Island County farming during the nineteenth century" production switched from grain and potatoes to sheep herding, then back to crops, and finally to intensive farming by Chinese tenants in the 1880s and 1890s. Originally entering the Pacific Northwest to work on the railroads, these farmers were quite successful; however, most were forced off the island by racial prejudice, which sometimes burst into physical violence over the next few decades. [27]

Farming was not the only economic pursuit on the island. The fishing industry rapidly rose and fell by the 1930s, ant which time fish runs became depleted. The activity with the greatest impact on the island was logging, Whidbey Island's first major industry. Native Americans had occasionally burned portions of the island's forests to allow the regeneration of plants edible by both game and humans, but the scope of the settlers' logging was enormous. If they acquired wooded lots, they usually cleared part, if not all, of them. Initially, logging occured at water's edge on Penn Cove, where removal was easiest. The first major lumber company, Grennan & Cranney, opened in 1856, followed in a few years by a small shipyard in Oak Harbor. By the 1880s a number of off-island logging companies were cutting timber on Whidbey Island. Originally slow operations that utilized axes and bull teams, they increased their output when they adopted the crosscut saw and used horses and larger crews. By 1900, a cheaper and more efficient system was introduced with the donkey engine, a steam engine outfitted with skids and a winch. Since most of the old growth Douglas fir had now been cut, loggers took cedar, hemlock, and even second growth fir; however, the largest operations transferred to Camano Island. [28]