Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve Reading the Cultural Landscape

LANDSCAPE DEVELOPMENT AND SETTLEMENT PATTERNS

Introduction to Settlement Patterns

As a way of understanding historic trends and significant landscape elements on the reserve, it is valuable to trace the patterns of settlement, types of land use, and the structures that reflect human use and adaption to the natural environment over time.

Previous studies (see bibliography) have identified five general historic periods and themes on the reserve including: The Salish Occupation, 1300-1850; White Settlement, 1850-1870; Community Development, 1870-1910; Community Stabilization, 1910-1940; Tourism and Recreation, 1940-present.

While these "eras" are general and the historic themes frequently overlap from one period to another, such an organization provides a framework for understanding the human impacts, artifacts and historic remnants on the landscape we see today. The following is not, therefore, a chronology of events so much as a history of land patterns and significant pieces of the past that still remain in the landscape of the reserve.