Ocean City State Park History

Ocean City State Park has been an oceanfront destination for generations. The park faces the Pacific Ocean at North America’s “active margin,” where the ocean-floor Juan de Fuca tectonic plate slowly sinks beneath the continent, sliding at a rate of about 13 feet per century in the plate’s subduction zone. Sudden movements of the Juan de Fuca Plate can cause earthquakes that may modify the land surface and generate tsunamis.

Earthquakes and Tsunamis

On January 26, 1700, a massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake ruptured the entire length of the subduction zone where the oceanic plate meets the continental plate. The land surface on what is now Washington’s Pacific Ocean beaches dropped by several feet and produced a tsunami that inundated the outer coasts of Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. The tsunami waves traveled across the entire Pacific Ocean within 10 hours, moving at about the same speed as a commercial airline flight, to produce a 12-foot-high “orphan tsunami” on the coast of Japan that washed away dozens of buildings. On the Washington coast, trees that had stood above the tide line for centuries found their roots submerged in saltwater. A layer of sediment spread over muddy tidelands, leaving evidence to be unearthed hundreds of years later by geologists unraveling the ancient history of the coast.

On March 27, 1964, at 5:36 pm, a similar magnitude earthquake occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, generating a tsunami. The tsunami arrived at Ocean City State Park at 11:30 pm. Park Ranger Wallace Beckley is credited with saving the lives of more than a dozen campers in the park that night. As in many tsunami incidents, multiple very large waves came on shore. Despite warnings from Ranger Beckley, some campers returned to their campsites after the first wave receded, only to require help when the second wave arrived. “It came over the dunes shooting five feet high, tossing around those logs like matchsticks. I helped pull a woman out of the surf who was so frozen with fear she could not move,” he recalled to a newspaper reporter.

New Lands

A government survey prepared in 1860 shows the location of the high tide line in today’s Ocean City State Park nearly a mile inland from its present location. That is not an error in the survey. The coast at Ocean City State Park has accumulated sediment, adding new land to the coast, a process called accretion. Oceanographic studies have shown that sediment carried to the coast by rivers or eroded from bluffs on the water’s edge is transported parallel to the shore by strong coastal currents during the winter season. In the summer, waves transport the sediment up the face of the shore, extending the land toward the sea. When jetties were built at the mouth of Grays Harbor in the early 20th century, the rate of accretion at today’s Ocean City State Park doubled, as the transport of sediments along the shore changed.

Indigenous Lands

The park lies within the traditional territories of Coast Salish Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Quinault Indian Nation and Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation. For thousands of years this area has provided habitat for a diverse community of life that forms the basis of their cultures. Oral traditions of the tribes include references to landscape-level changes to the area with an earthquake and a giant tsunami over 300 years ago.

Some local tribes ceded ownership of the area to the US federal government under duress in the Treaty of Quinault River in July 1855, keeping rights to harvest natural resources in their usual and accustomed places, including the ocean beaches and woodlands of today’s Ocean City State Park.

Other local tribes refused to accept the conditions proposed by Washington Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens at the Chehalis River Treaty Council in February 1855. Subsequently, title to the land was relinquished to the US federal government and the Chehalis Reservation was established by executive order of Secretary of the Interior J. P. Usher on July 8, 1864.

After government surveys were completed in 1860, land in today’s park passed into private ownership with Cash Entry Patents in 1872 to A. E. Wait and Rachel W. Morris.

Big Dreams and Beach Bums

Ocean City State Park is bounded on the north and south by communities with very different origins. The city of Ocean Shores, to the south, was founded as a resort destination. The land on the Point Brown Peninsula was sold by rancher Ralph Menard to the Ocean Shores Development Corporation in 1960 for $1 million. Hopes of developing a gambling resort were not realized, but the community developed with retirement and vacation houses, RV parks, and accommodations for vacationers.  

North of the park is Ocean City, an unincorporated area that attracted residents during and after the Great Depression of the 1930s who were seeking simplicity away from city life. Many built homes with wood and other materials salvaged from the ocean beaches. Most lived off fish and shellfish that were readily available. Many worked as seasonal laborers in agriculture and logging businesses.

Camping by the Pacific Surf

The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission realized the demand and need for public recreation areas on the Pacific Ocean beaches and purchased land for the park on April 24, 1960. Appropriations were made for the construction of park facilities and the park was dedicated on January 22, 1962, as Ocean City State Park. The park’s campground is one of the largest in the state park system.