Hope Island (Mason) Marine State Park History

Hope Island Marine State Park is a delightful South Puget Sound island that owes its form and setting to the effects of Ice Age glacial processes. The island also holds the stories of some of its human residents, who found in it a place to retreat to a simpler life connected with nature, and make dreams come true.

Born of Glacial Ice

The site of today’s Hope Island Marine State Park was covered by glacial ice during the Pleistocene Ice Age. The fingerlike waterways of South Puget Sound were excavated by highly pressurized meltwater streams that developed as the thousands-of-feet-thick 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 the water to flow to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The sand, gravel, and clay that were carried and ground by the slow-moving ice were left behind after it melted and are now seen in the bluffs and shores of Hope Island.

Indigenous Lands

Hope Island Marine State Park lies within the traditional territories of Coast Salish Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Squaxin Island Tribe and Nisqually Indian Tribe. For thousands of years the waters of South Puget Sound have provided habitat for a diverse community of life that forms the basis of their culture.

Local tribes ceded ownership of the area to the US federal government under duress in the Treaty of Medicine Creek in 1854, keeping rights to harvest natural resources in their usual and accustomed places, including the waters surrounding today’s Hope Island. The Squaxin Island Indian Reservation, established by the treaty, lies just north of today’s park.

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 Hope Island was coined by the expedition’s Commander Charles Wilkes, but there appears to be no record of the source of that name. Interestingly, Wilkes applied the same name to a similar island in Skagit Bay, 85 miles to the north. Both islands are now Washington state parks.

The surrounding narrow waterways, Eld Inlet, Totten Inlet, Hammersley Inlet and Pickering Passage, were also named by Wilkes to honor members of the expedition. Squaxin Passage takes its name from the original people of the region.

Island Newcomers

A government land survey delineating Hope Island was completed in 1854, one of the earliest such surveys completed in the Washington Territory. The entire island was purchased from the US Government as a Cash Entry patent by Marie Gilmore in 1869, but there is no record of Marie or her husband John actually residing on the island.

In 1895, the Schmidt brothers, Leopold and Louis, moved to the Olympia area to start a new brewery operation, which became the Olympia Brewing Company in 1902. Local newspapers noted that the Schmidt brothers were “men of ample means,” resulting from their successful enterprises in Montana. Along with his wife, Clara, Louis was fond of boating among the waterways of South Puget Sound in their boat, the Montana. During their cruises they must have noted Hope Island, and they had purchased the island by 1896.

The Schmidts built a permanent home on the island, in part purportedly to shield a disabled child from public exposure. After establishing a windmill-powered water well, they planted an orchard with apple, pear, and walnut trees, and raised cattle, horses, and foxes. They also established a 5-acre vineyard near their residence, growing Island Belle grapes, a hybrid variety of concord grapes, which they sold to a winery on nearby Harstine Island. The enforcement of Prohibition in Washington in 1916 ended both the wine- and beer-making enterprises. The Schmidts sold the property and returned to Germany in the 1930s.

The Munns

The island remained unoccupied until it was purchased by Sarah and Robert Munn, owners of the Fort Lewis Dairy, in 1943 for $20,000. Their eldest son, Robert Jr., had recently been called up from the US Army Reserves for duty in World War II. Tragically, he was killed in action in Massa, Italy, just two weeks before the surrender of German forces.

The Munns used the home as a vacation residence and added a cedar caretaker’s cabin in 1947. They contracted with a logging company to selectively log portions of the island in 1948, but specifically prohibited the removal of cedar trees in the contract. The Munns acquired a surplus World War II landing barge to provide transportation to the island.

Caretakers that the Munns hired to steward the property added more trees to the orchard, developed an irrigation cistern, and started an oyster-growing operation on the island’s tidelands. Gordon Chew and Ann Connelly, caretakers from the late 1970s to early 1980s, built a wooden boat, the Osprey, a 26-foot engineless cutter, during their time on the island. Ultimately, they would spend six years cruising in the boat to Mexico, Panama, the Galapagos Islands, Polynesia, New Zealand, Fiji, and Hawaii, before returning to the Pacific Northwest to settle on an island in Southeast Alaska.

Robert Munn passed away in 1954; Sarah kept the property as a retreat until her death in May 1990 at the age of 97. Shortly before her death, she sold the property to a Tacoma developer who planned to subdivide the property for development of vacation residences.

Making a Park

The Washington State Legislature created and funded the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program (WWRP) in 1990 to acquire valuable recreation and habitat lands before they were lost to other uses, and to develop recreation areas for a growing population. One of the first grants awarded by the program was used by the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSPRC) to purchase Hope Island for $3.17 million on August 29, 1990. Proponents of its acquisition noted that it was one of the only undeveloped islands remaining in Puget Sound.

Five years later, the WWRP granted the WSPRC another $250,000 to develop day-use and overnight recreation facilities on the island. The homes built by the Schmidts and Munns are gone, the orchard still produces fruit and nuts, and even a few grapevines can still be found.