Illahee State Park History

Illahee State Park takes its name from the Chinook jargon word for “homeland.” The park lies within the traditional territories of Coast Salish Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Suquamish Tribe. Indigenous historian Vi Hilbert noted that today’s park occupies a site known as Xitca’sEb, meaning “to feel a tremor.” Geologists have mapped two main faults of the Seattle Fault Zone running north and south of the park area. The fault zone was the site of a major earthquake 1,100 years ago.

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 protected waters of Port Orchard on the shore of today’s Illahee State Park.

Land Distribution and Logging

After government surveys were completed in 1858, the waterfront part of today’s park passed into private ownership as Cash Entry patents, a type of sale of public domain lands, in 1865 and 1866 to Charles Moore. The promontory occupied by today’s park became known as Moore Point. The inland portion of the park became private land as a Cash Entry patent sold to Augustus Peterson in 1891. Augustus and his son Nels logged the land with a team of oxen.

Creating a State Park

In later life, Nels Peterson became active in a community organization, the East Bremerton Improvement Club (EBIC). In the early 1930s, Kitsap County Commissioner Walter J. Rue notified EBIC member Earl Henry Harkins that a parcel of the former Moore property had reverted to the county for tax delinquency and was soon to be auctioned for sale. Harkins spearheaded an effort by the EBIC to obtain the land for park purposes.

On April 23, 1934, the State Parks Committee accepted the donation of about 14 acres of land from the Kitsap County Commissioners for establishment of a state park at the site.

Works Progress Administration

In the 1930’s 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.

Unlike the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which provided employment opportunities for young single men, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was established to help unemployed men and women with families to support. The slogan “A hand up, not a hand out,” recognized that the program was providing a chance to work for a living and avoid the stigma of charity. Over the eight-year life of the agency, more than 8.5 million people worked on more than 1.4 million individual projects.

In Illahee State Park, WPA workers constructed a kitchen shelter, outdoor toilets, trails, roads, campsites and a water well. The park opened to the public in 1938.

A Day in the Life of a Park Caretaker

In 1942, Earl Harkins' son-in-law Don Atkinson was hired as the first park caretaker, a position he continued to hold until 1945. His wife, Anna Jo Harkins Atkinson, was an equal, if unpaid, partner in the job. The appointment was made for five months of the year, seven days a week, for a salary of $80 per month.

The caretaker’s living facilities consisted of a small one-room cabin with two bunks and a wood cookstove plus a large sleeping tent on a wood platform. In an article she wrote in 1988, Anna Jo recalled:

"As soon as I sent our two older children off to school, I would begin to cut grass, pile up brush and debris and burn it, clean the toilets and start to work on the trails to the beach. Don came after finishing his mail route and we would cut wood from downed timber for the camp stoves."

Earl Harkins remained dedicated to the improvement of Illahee State Park, advocating for additional land purchases to expand the park, road access and parking by the beach, and a war memorial near the park entrance. With the help of State Senator Clifford “Red” Beck he acquired two surplus five-inch 51 caliber guns taken from the USS West Virginia, sunk at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Harkins passed away in 1950 before it was dedicated. At the dedication of the memorial on Memorial Day, 1950, a plaque honoring Earl Harkins as the “founder of Illahee State Park” was unveiled.