Clark Island Marine State Park History

Clark Island Marine State Park preserves an entire long, narrow island along the northern edge of the San Juan Archipelago.

A Rocky Island

The San Juan Islands are distinct from most of Puget Sound in that they feature shorelines with exposures of hard bedrock, rather than the bluffs of clay, sand and gravel left by Ice Age glaciers that are predominant on most of Washington’s Salish Sea, the state’s inland saltwater passages.

The rocks that make up Clark Island were formed from sediments on the sea floor about 75-80 million years ago, at a location hundreds of miles south of where they are today. Geologists call this formation the Nanaimo Group.

The forces of plate tectonics, driving the spreading and subduction of Earth’s crustal plates, eventually brought the Nanaimo Group to its present location in today’s northwest Washington and neighboring British Columbia. Later stress placed on the rocks by the subduction of oceanic crust underneath North America folded the rocks into a tight arch, known as an anticline. Careful observation reveals that layers in the island’s bedrock tip in opposite directions on opposite sides of the island.

Clark Island is distinguished by extensive shoreline outcrops of conglomerate, a rock that is made up of tumbled pebbles and boulders that must have been carried in an energetic riverbed for some distance before coming to rest on the ocean floor. The individual rocks were cemented together in a matrix of finer sand grains by the pressure of sediments that accumulated above them. Early observers referred to this rock type as “pudding stone.”

Indigenous Land

The park lies within the traditional territory of Coast Salish Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Lummi Nation, Samish Indian Nation, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, and First Nations in Canada.

For thousands of years the lands and waters of the San Juan Archipelago have provided habitat for a diverse community of life that forms the basis of their cultures. As winter days lengthen into spring, herring and herring roe collect in the eelgrass beds near shore. A little later, spring Chinook salmon pass through the island channels. Early summer brings sockeye salmon, harvested for millennia with reef nets. Sea urchins are gathered by expert divers in late summer, and clamming peaks in the fall.

European Competition

In the 1700’s many European nations attempted to discover and claim a “Northwest Passage” connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Spanish Crown claimed exclusive rights to colonize the west coast of North America based on the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. Eight Spanish expeditions between 1774 and 1790 charted parts of today’s Pacific Northwest coast and established a Spanish settlement at Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island. In 1791, Spanish Naval Officer Francisco de Eliza y Reventa was sent to reinforce the Spanish presence at Nootka Sound and direct further exploration of the Strait of Juan de Fuca as a possible Northwest Passage. During June of that year, Eliza’s pilots charted much of the San Juan Archipelago, and the name “Islas de Aguayo” was applied to the neighboring islands now known as Clark Island and Barnes Island. The name honored Juan Vicente de Guemes Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo, Second Count of Revillagigedo and the Viceroy of Mexico from 1789 to 1794.

Spain claimed the area as part of its Territorio de Nutka but relinquished the claim to the United States in the 1819 Adams-Onis Treaty, later confirmed by newly independent Mexico. Dual claims to the region by the US and Britain were negotiated and settled in 1846, but the status of the San Juan Archipelago remained disputed until the competing claims were adjudicated by a commission appointed by German Kaiser Wilhelm I in 1872.

Local tribes had ceded ownership of the area to the US federal government under duress in the Treaty of Point Elliot in 1855, in spite of the as-yet unsettled colonial administration of the San Juan Archipelago.  The tribes reserved rights to harvest natural resources in their usual and accustomed places, including the lands and waters of surrounding Clark Island.

US Ex. Ex.

The US Congress authorized an exploring and surveying expedition by US military personnel to map and gather scientific information about the Antarctic and Australian continents, the Pacific Ocean and the Pacific Northwest in 1836, the first such project by the US government. The US Exploring Expedition (or US Ex. Ex.) set sail from Hampton Roads, Virginia on August 18, 1838, and explored much of today’s state of Washington, by sea and overland into today’s eastern Washington, during the summer of 1841, before returning to New York by completing a circumnavigation of the globe on June 10, 1842.

The present-day name for Clark Island was coined by the expedition’s Commander Charles Wilkes. He charted the island to honor naval officer John Clark, who died in the Battle of Lake Erie on September 10, 1813. On February 10, 1814, the US Congress passed a resolution directing that a Congressional Sword be presented to “the nearest male relation of Midshipman John Clark who was slain gallantly combatting the enemy.” The awarding of Congressional Swords was discontinued after the War of 1812.

In the 1850s, James Alden Jr., a veteran of Wilkes’ expedition, returned to Washington’s inland waterways to complete a survey of the coast, including recommendations for lighthouses and navigational aids.

Lighthouse Reservation

In 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant issued an Executive Order reserving Clark Island, among other locations in the San Juan Archipelago, for the construction of a lighthouse. No lighthouse was ever built on the island.

The US General Land Office completed the official survey of Clark Island in 1896, well after most of Washington had been surveyed. The surveyor noted that at the southern end of the island “there are about five acres cleared with a small orchard. There is a frame house, belonging to William Pollard. The approximate value of the improvements is about $800.”

Because the island was an official US Lighthouse Reservation it was not available to be purchased or “proved up” under terms of the Homestead Act, and it remained a part of the federal public domain lands. Because of its status, it remained largely undeveloped, retaining its assemblage of species and habitats, serendipitously preserved.

Making a Park

On June 14, 1926, the US Congress passed the Recreation and Public Purposes Act, authorizing the Secretary of the Interior to “dispose of any public lands to a State…for any public purposes.” In the 1960s, the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSPRC) realized the growing desire and need for marine recreation in the state. They sought to acquire some of the individual San Juan Islands with outstanding potential for recreational use that remained part of the federal public domain lands, then administered by the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

On January 8, 1964, the BLM transferred the entire 55 acres of Clark Island to the WSPRC, establishing Clark Island Marine State Park. Primitive campsites were developed on the southern part of the island, leaving the park mostly pristine.