Kukutali Preserve History

Place of the Cattail Mat

Kukutali Preserve protects an island attached to the mainland by a landform called a tombolo. This connecting spit is made of sand and gravel deposited by wave action in shallow water. It is covered with scattered driftwood.

The traditional name, Kukutali, means “place of the cattail mat.”

For thousands of years, Kukutali has been a part of the territory of Coast Salish people whose present-day descendants include members of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and Upper Skagit Indian Tribe. Here, women gathered cattails in the summer that they wove into sturdy mats in the winter.  Men hunted elk who came to Kukutali at dusk by stretching nets made from nettle bark root across their trails and trapping them as they returned to the woods. Ducks were caught by stretching a net on poles between Kukutali and neighboring Skagit Island.  Fishermen wove weir nets from willow and cedar bark and laid them in the water just offshore. When humpback salmon came in through Deception Pass into the nets, they would be pulled up and brought into shore.

The cattail mats were erected in the summer months at Kukutali as temporary shelters. Elders and families would spend days or weeks living on the beach, telling stories, digging clams, and sharing meals.

Reservation Land Almost Became a Nuclear Power Plant

Kukutali is part of the Swinomish Indian Reservation established by the Treaty of Point Elliot in 1855. On February 8, 1887, the US Congress passed the Dawes Act, authorizing the subdivision of communal tribal land on this and other reservations into allotments for Native American heads of families and individuals. The land at Kukutali was allotted to Clark and Madeline Cho-ba-hud. In 1928, the Swinomish people’s long relationship with Kukutali was fractured when the land was sold, passing from tribal hands into private ownership by non-Indigenous people. Consequently, for many years tribal members were prevented from harvesting shellfish on tidelands which surround the island and continued to be owned by the tribe.

The first purchasers were a consortium which intended to develop a resort on the property. The Great Depression halted that effort. In 1943, Gene Dunlap, founder of Dunlap Towing Company in nearby La Conner, one of the original developers, purchased the remainder of Kukutali and built a grand home overlooking the western approach to the island. In 1969, Seattle City Light purchased the property as the site for a nuclear power plant, prompting vehement local protests. In 1972 the proposal was shelved after scientific studies revealed inadequate flushing of the waters in Skagit Bay. In 1982 the property was purchased by Wally Opdyke, a co-founder of Chateau Ste. Michelle winery.

A New Kind of Park

On June 18, 2010, in a historic agreement the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission became co-owners and co-managers of Kukutali. It is believed to be the first such arrangement in the United States.

Now, in addition to being a public state park, Kukutali, and the tide lands around it are once again accessible to Swinomish tribal members to carry on the traditional ways of their ancestors. In keeping with the long connection to this place, tribal members selected Kukutali in 2022 as the site for a 200-foot-long clam garden. The garden will be a terraced stretch of beach that will form behind a rock berm placed in the intertidal area. Once again, families will gather to harvest together, elders will pass down teachings to young ones and all will work together to tend the site.