Ebey's Landing State Park Heritage Site History

Ebey’s Landing State Park Heritage Site is situated at a point where tall bluffs of ice age glacial outwash that ring most of Whidbey Island gently lower to the sea, affording easy access from the saltwater beach to the open prairies of the island’s interior. People have lived here for more than 10,000 years. It is among the most culturally significant settings in the Pacific Northwest.

Left Behind by Melting Ice

Ebey’s Landing was formed by glacial action during the most recent ice age. The Puget Lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet reached its most recent maximum around 17,000 years ago, with a thickness of about 4,500 feet of ice covering today’s site of Ebey’s Landing.

The ice remained at its maximum for only a few hundred years before rapidly melting. During the retreat of the glacial ice, the landforms around Ebey’s Landing were deposited at the front of the ice as it stood still for some time, creating deltas of glacial outwash at the front of the ice.

Today’s Ebey’s Prairie was underneath the level of the sea at the time, and icebergs calving from the front of the ice melted while floating above the submerged land, leaving a 20-40 foot thick distinctive fine-grained “glaciomarine drift” deposit on the shallow sea floor that would become Ebey’s Prairie.

Other ice blocks calving off of the front of the ice were quickly covered with gravel carried in rushing meltwater. These ice blocks later melted, leaving sunken “kettles” where the gravel caved into the space left by the melted ice.

After the ice completely melted, the land rebounded hundreds of feet with the weight of the ice removed, allowing Ebey’s Prairie to emerge above sea level. Dunes developed on the former meltwater deltas above the prairie from wind deposited sand.

Over time, rich soils interspersed with wetlands developed on the gentle surface of the prairie.

Indigenous Lands

Ebey’s Landing State Park Heritage Site lies within the traditional territories of Coast Salish Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Tulalip Tribes, Lummi Nation, and Suquamish Tribe.

The natural prairies that had developed on the glaciomarine drift came to support a diverse plant community highlighted by camas, highly desired for its starchy bulbs.

Indigenous people favored this area for its access to marine resources, its portage route from the open waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the protected waters east of Whidbey Island, and for the large open prairies. Visits to the prairie occurred in spring and fall for harvesting the camas bulbs under shared, controlled conditions. Camas would be steamed or pit-cooked for days, yielding a sweet-flavored food similar to boiled chestnuts.

Archaeological records confirm that Indigenous stewards of Ebey’s Prairie used controlled burning to maintain the prairie ecosystem against the encroachment of trees and shrubs for at least 2,300 years.

Local tribes ceded ownership of the area to the US federal government under duress in the Treaty of Point Elliot in 1855, keeping rights to harvest natural resources in their usual and accustomed places, including the lands and waters of Whidbey Island. After government land surveys were completed in 1856, the land in today’s Ebey’s Landing State Park Heritage Site was conveyed into private ownership as a Donation Land Claim to the heirs of Isaac Ebey.

The Story of Isaac N. Ebey

Isaac N. Ebey was a settler who had arrived in the Puget Sound country in 1850 and availed himself of the opportunity to occupy 642 acres of the prairie land on Whidbey Island under terms of the Oregon Donation Land Claims Act. The act allowed newcomers to claim and colonize Indigenous land without compensation to those who had stewarded the land for centuries.

Because Indigenous stewards had kept the land cleared, the prairie was much easier to convert to farming than the timbered lands nearby. Ebey planted wheat, potatoes, onions, carrots, cabbages, parsnips, peas and barley where camas had grown for thousands of years. He also built a dock extending into Admiralty Inlet from his property—Ebey’s Landing.

Encouraged by the success of his farm he wrote home on April 25, 1851, saying:

"My dear brother— I scarcely know how I shall write or what I shall write . . . the great desire of heart is to get my own and father's family to this country. I think it would be a great move. I have always thought so . . . To the north down along Admiralty Inlet . . . the cultivating land is generally found confined to the valleys of streams with the exception of Whidbey's Island . . . which is almost a paradise of nature. Good land for cultivation is abundant on this island. I have taken a claim on it and am now living on the same in order to avail myself of the provisions of the Donation Law. If Rebecca, the children, and you all were here, I think I could live and die here content." 

As his family arrived and they settled into the farm, Ebey involved himself in territorial politics and was elected Colonel of the Territorial Militia of Island and Jefferson Counties. He was also appointed Customs Collector for Washington by President Pierce, a job that required him to row over to Port Townsend whenever a cargo ship sailed into port.

Isaac’s wife, Rebecca, kept a diary during the period, revealing her perspective of the hardships caused by weather, isolation and loneliness, pregnancy, illness and hard physical work. Rebecca died in 1853 from complications of the birth of their daughter Sarah who also died shortly after birth. Isaac soon remarried Emily Palmer Sconce, a widow with a daughter named Anna.

At the time, Indigenous and settler residents of Puget Sound country feared raids by tribal people from areas far to the north. On November 19, 1856, residents alerted US military personnel that several canoes of Tlingit warriors had been observed. The USS Massachusetts, under the command of Samuel Swartwout pursued the Tlingit and ultimately opened fire on their encampment near Port Gamble, killing more than two dozen, including a beloved leader.

Regrouping in their homeland, a party of more than 100 of the Tlingit from Kupreanof Island in Alaska returned on August 11, 1857, to avenge the death of their chief and the others killed in the Battle of Port Gamble. Seeking a person of equivalent standing to their murdered chief, they settled on Isaac Ebey.

On that evening the Tlingit beached their canoes at Ebey’s Landing and climbed the bluff to his house. Hearing his dogs bark in the night, Ebey opened the door and stepped outside.

As he was executed, his wife Emily and their children Anna, Ellison and Eason raced away to the safety of a blockhouse built by Isaac's father Jacob on the ridge above—at today's Prairie Ridge trailhead entrance to Ebey's Landing State Park. Traumatized beyond recovery, Emily never returned to their home, although eventually Ellison and Eason divided the farm between themselves and farmed there for the rest of their lives.

Making a Park

In the 1970s a group of local residents began to advocate for the protection of the central Whidbey area. Their goal was to preserve its historic and scenic values as well as perpetuate the rural lifeways with working farms, iconic barns, trails and hedgerows.

In 1978, the US Congress passed legislation establishing the Ebey’s Landing National Historic Reserve, the first such unit administered by the National Park Service. The Reserve is a preservation partnership cooperatively managed by a trust board which includes the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSPRC).

To preserve public access to the ocean beach scenic corridor between the existing Fort Casey and Fort Ebey State Parks, the WSPRC acquired 19 acres at Ebey’s Landing in 1978 with a court authorized taking by eminent domain. An additional 27 acres was acquired along Parego’s Lagoon to the north three years later.

Ebey’s Landing State Park Heritage Site has become an integral part of the larger National Historic Reserve, attracting visitors to stroll along the shoreline and the bluffs above while contemplating the deep historical significance of this place.