Deception Pass State Park History

The arching bridges that link Fidalgo Island to Whidbey Island are only an introduction to the beauty and fascination of Deception Pass State Park.

From the Ocean Floor

The rocky cliffs that frame Deception Pass began as lava erupting on the ocean floor or slowly accumulating sediments formed by skeletons of marine microorganisms, windblown dust and volcanic ash settling to the ocean floor. The pillow basalts, chert and shale seen at Rosario Head are today’s evidence of this process. Over time other sediments were agitated by underwater landslides and hardened into a dense rock called graywacke. All of these deep oceanic rocks were thrust up and out of the ocean as tectonic plates collided off the ancient coast of present-day Washington, folding and twisting the rocks. More recently, ice age glaciers gouged and polished the bedrock, leaving the slick and grooved surfaces seen today at Goose Rock.

Salmon Highway

Every year millions of juvenile salmon swim away from their birthplaces in the Skagit, Stillaguamish and Snohomish River watersheds toward the open Pacific Ocean. Many pause in the protected nearshore habitats of Cornet Bay, Bowman Bay and other parts of Deception Pass State Park. There, in underwater eelgrass meadows protected from currents and predators, they find tiny marine creatures to eat and build strength for their ocean journey.

Indigenous Lands

The park lies within the traditional territory of Coast Salish Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Samish Indian Nation, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Lummi Nation, Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, and Tulalip Tribes. In pre-contact times, today’s Deception Pass State Park and the surrounding waterways of today’s Salish Sea provided home and sustenance for the people. On the land, stately old growth forests provided a wide variety of sprouts, roots, bulbs, berries, and nuts to collect. Hunters pursued deer, elk and other game. Cedar was used for constructing homes and canoes. The saltwater shores and depths provided plentiful shellfish, mussels and fish, of which salmon was most important. For millenia, salmon have been at the heart of Coast Salish diet and culture. Indigenous fishers wove weir nets from willow and cedar bark and laid them in the water just offshore. When salmon came in through Deception Pass into the nets, they would be pulled up and brought into shore. Even with different fishing technologies and far less abundant fish populations today, the First Salmon Ceremony endures, honoring their return to the People of the Salmon.

Colonial Navigators

Competition between Spain and England for maritime and territorial control of the North Pacific coast of North America came to a head in the summer of 1789 when the commander of the Spanish outpost at Nootka Sound on today’s Vancouver Island seized British commercial ships engaging in fur trading with the Indigenous people of the area. War was nearly declared between Spain and Britain, until Spain backed down, realizing it could not count on an alliance with France, then preoccupied with the French Revolution. Spain and Britain negotiated joint claims of the area with the Nootka Convention in 1790.

In 1792, Captain George Vancouver was directed by the British Government to sail to Nootka Sound to meet Spanish commander Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, implement the terms of the Nootka Convention and complete a detailed survey of the Northwest Coast.

Though previous Spanish expeditions had made maps and charts of parts of today’s Salish Sea, Vancouver and his officers completed a much more rigorous survey. With a group of sailors in a small boat, Lt. Joseph Whidbey charted the large island later named for him, showing that the passage at its north end was not an inlet to a body of water they had not yet explored, as they had thought.

On June 10, 1792, Captain Vancouver noted the information in his journal: “…a very narrow and intricate channel, which, for a considerable distance, was not forty yards in width, and abounded with rocks above and beneath the surface of the water. These impediments, in addition to the great rapidity and irregularity of the tide, rendered the passage navigable only for boats or vessels of very small burthen…. I distinguished by the name…Deception Passage.”

In later chartings of the Salish Sea, as colonial administration of the area passed to the United States in 1846, the name was shortened to Deception Pass.

Local tribes ceded ownership of the area to the US federal government in the Treaty of Point Elliot in 1855, keeping rights to harvest natural resources in their usual and accustomed places, including the waters of Deception Pass. After government land surveys were completed, 1,986 acres, including much of the land that makes up today’s Deception Pass State Park, was established as a military reservation for the Department of the Army on September 22, 1866. Even though the lands held strategic significance, no permanent military installations were ever built on the land.

Rock for Washington’s First Highways

In 1907, the Washington State Legislature authorized the State Geologist to select five sites for quarries to produce crushed rock to build some of Washington’s first highways. One of the sites selected was in the sheer cliffs and talus slopes of graywacke in Deception Pass. The State Highway Commissioner leased 34 acres of the military reservation and located the quarry about 100 feet above the water. The rock was crushed at the pit and delivered by means of a chute to the screen house below where it was sorted into three different sizes and delivered to the storage bunker located at the water’s edge. All transportation to and from the site was by water.

Labor was performed by incarcerated men from the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. Credit of one year of their sentence was given to each laborer for 9 months of service at the quarry. Their assignment to the quarry was timed so that they would have served their minimum sentence by the time their nine months of service expired, and they would be eligible for release.

The quarry operated from August 1910 to December 1912, when other resources became available for highway construction. The expense of the operation was $79,009.46. Total receipts from the sale of its products added up to $27,554.17.

Land for Park Purposes

When members of the State Parks Committee learned in October 1921 of a proposal to lease the Deception Pass military reservation to private individuals, they sent an urgent “night letter,” or overnight telegram, to U.S. Representative Lindley H. Hadley from Washington’s 2nd Congressional District suggesting that the “State Parks Committee would rather have the property turned over to them for care.”

On March 23, 1922, the US Congress passed H.R. 9235, providing that:

…title and fee to all of the land comprising the military reservation…. [is]hereby granted…..to the State of Washington for public park purposes ….

The Washington State Parks Committee formally accepted the grant on April 17, 1922, and the new park was dedicated on July 20, 1922. Since then, the park has more than doubled in size as additional lands have been acquired.

The Civilian Conservation Corps

In the 1930s as the Great Depression deepened, people throughout Washington and across the US struggled with poverty as job losses and business closures erased their economic security. Newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved fast to provide material relief for suffering families, and one of the earliest hallmark programs of the administration was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Intended to provide useful employment and training for single men aged 18 to 25, the CCC ultimately provided jobs for more than 2 million enrollees who performed work in national and state parks and forests at more than 500 camps.

On June 18, 1933, CCC Company 266 established a camp at Cornet Bay in Deception Pass State Park with 164 enrollees from Delaware and an additional 40 locals from Island County. Superintendent of Parks William Weigle welcomed the help to replace the existing dilapidated facilities for park visitors. South of the pass he identified needs for a new water system, restrooms, stoves, bath houses, community kitchens, a caretaker’s house with garage, four miles of trails, five miles of roads and various landscaping projects. The Cornet Bay camp was active until 1938, and during that time other CCC companies rotated in and out. Replacing Company 266 was Company 572, composed of enrollees from Kentucky and Ohio, followed by Company 4786 with its enrollees from Missouri.

On November 2, 1933, a second CCC camp was opened near Rosario Beach on Fidalgo Island north of the yet unbridged pass. It was occupied by Company 948 whose members were drawn from surrounding counties. It operated for 18 months, completing bath houses, restrooms, a caretaker’s house, trails and roads.

By creating opportunity out of a national crisis, the CCC programs in Washington State provided lifelong benefits for enrollees and made lasting investments in state parks that visitors still enjoy today.

In recognition of the many accomplishments of the CCC in developing Deception Pass State Park and 10 other Washington State Parks, the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission selected the CCC-built bath house at Bowman Bay to house an interpretive center with photos, excerpts of interviews with CCC veterans, and memorabilia donated by many alumni. The CCC Interpretive Center was dedicated on July 16, 1988.

The Bridge

In addition to their work on park facilities, CCC members on both sides of Deception Pass helped prepare roadways to access the Deception Pass Bridge, which was being constructed by private contractors. Preparing the roadways involved blasting rock; the drilling for the powder charges was done by hand.

A bridge had been proposed to cross Deception Pass for many years. Regularly scheduled ferry service between Hoypus Point in today’s Deception Pass State Park and Fidalgo Island began in 1919, with a contract awarded to Berte Olson and her husband, “Augie.” They designed and built two ferries, the 12-car “Deception Pass” and the 16-car “Acorn.” Berte became the first woman licensed to skipper a ferry boat on the waters of the Salish Sea.

In 1928, teacher Pearl Wanamaker ran to represent the 38th District in the Washington House of Representatives, largely on the issue of getting the bridge built to replace the sporadic availability and limited capacity of the ferry with a permanent roadway. In the legislature, she shepherded House Bill No. 85, granting a franchise “to construct and maintain a road through any state park situated in two counties and divided into two or more parts by tidal waters constituting the boundary between such counties.”  The bill passed unanimously in both the House and Senate, only to be vetoed by Governor Roland H. Hartley, likely a result of Berte Olson’s lobbying to save her ferry operation. After Governor Hartley’s defeat in 1932, Wanamker sponsored the bill again, and it was signed by Governor Clarence D. Martin. Funding was provided from New Deal federal emergency relief funds, and the construction contract was awarded to Puget Construction Company of Seattle. Construction began in August 1934 and the bridge was dedicated on July 31, 1935. Though the Deception Pass ferry was put out of business by the bridge, Berte Olson was able to continue her business, providing ferry services on Hood Canal.

The Maiden of Deception Pass

A large story pole in the Rosario Beach area of the park depicts Ko-kwal-alwoot, the central figure in a Samish legend. In the story, the young woman is approached by a royal being from under the ocean. She and her family are challenged to make transforming choices with life and death consequences. The pole was carved by Tracy Powell, under the guidance of Samish tribal members Laura Squi-qui Edwards, Linda Day, Mary Hansen and Ken Hansen and dedicated on September 24,1983. A series of signs around the carving tell the story of Ko-kwal-alwoot accompanied by artwork from a Samish artist. One side of the carving depicts Ko-kwal-alwoot as a young woman; the other side depicts her as she begins her transformation. She holds a large salmon and stands as a reminder of her sacrifice to ensure the well-being of her people.

Caring for the Legacy

The rocky tidepools below Rosario Head near the beach are unique in the Washington State Parks system. In the spring, extreme low tides allow easy access to tidepools deep into the intertidal zone, which features a diversity of rarely seen creatures such as sea anemones, sea cucumbers, sea stars, limpets and chitons. Unregulated access brought thousands of people into the tidepools at the same time. Trampling of the tidepools left them nearly lifeless. In the early 1990’s staff at Deception Pass State Park took action to protect the intertidal area at Rosario Beach.

A reservation system for school groups was initiated to curtail overcrowding and beach etiquette programs are shared with teachers. Trained volunteer Beach Naturalists help visitors better understand and appreciate tidepool life, and an intertidal rope trail guides visitors away from the most sensitive areas. The tidepools have begun to recover, and pockets of diverse aquatic life can once again be seen at low tide.