Belfair State Park History

The End of Hood Canal

Belfair State Park features a popular stretch of beach between the mouths of Big Mission Creek and Little Mission Creek at the tip of the hook of Hood Canal. Today’s Belfair State Park was covered by glacial ice during the last ice age. The finger-like waterways of South Puget Sound were excavated by highly pressurized meltwater streams that developed as the ice began to melt. Meltwaters flowed south and west through today’s Chehalis River Valley to the Pacific Ocean until the ice melted far enough to the north to allow a connection to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Indigenous Lands

Belfair State Park lies within the traditional territories of Coast Salish Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Skokomish Indian Tribe and Suquamish Tribe. For thousands of years the waters of Hood Canal and its tributaries have provided habitat for a diverse community of life that forms the basis of their cultures. A Coast Salish name for the winter village in the area, Duhlelap, was recorded as meaning “place at the farthest-in tail end of the water” by anthropologist William W. Elmendorf.

Local tribes ceded ownership of the area to the US federal government under duress in the Treaty of Point No Point in 1855, keeping rights to harvest natural resources in their usual and accustomed places, including the waters of Hood Canal. After government land surveys were completed in 1861, most of the land in today’s Belfair State Park was conveyed into private ownership as a Homestead Entry patent issued to Henry Jackson on May 3, 1888. Jackson supplemented the subsistence provided by fishing and farming his property by contracting to carry the mail between Clifton (as Belfair was called before 1925) and Sidney (as Port Orchard was called until 1903). Jackson lived on the property until 1903. Though other people held title to the land that now makes up the park, the record doesn’t show that anyone else established a residence there.

Making a Park

The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission began purchasing property to create Belfair State Park in 1952. The new park was officially named on December 29, 1952. Development of the beach and parking areas involved extensive grading and filling of the tidal marsh between the mouths of Little Mission Creek and Big Mission Creek between 1952 and 1960, and additional land acquisitions and park facilities were added during that time.