Joemma Beach State Park History

Joemma Beach State Park provides access to the shores of southern Puget Sound. The sinuous saltwater passageways of the South Sound, including Case Inlet in front of the park, were molded and scoured by glacial meltwaters at the close of the Pleistocene ice age.

Indigenous Lands

Joemma Beach State Park lies within the traditional territories of Coast Salish Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Squaxin Island Tribe. For thousands of years the shoreline, woods and waters here 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.

The official government land survey of the area in today’s Joemma Beach State Park was completed in 1854, locating it in Section 16 of Township 20 North, Range 1 West based on the Willamette Meridian. Lands in Section 16 in each surveyed township were reserved to eventually be granted to the state of Washington when Washington Territory attained statehood. Granted lands would be managed in trust for the support of public schools and other state institutions.

In the 1860s, Warren Reed, a settler from Maine, lived with his Indigenous wife and children on a plot of land on the small inlet bordering today’s park to the south. According to historian Edmund Meany, he was the only non-Indigenous person living in the area at the time, so the cove became known as “Whiteman’s Cove.” The name was shortened to Whiteman Cove by the United States Board of Geographic Names in 1942. Reed did not complete a claim for a homestead patent, and the property remained public domain land.

The land was granted to the State of Washington at statehood on November 11, 1889. Because this section was made up mostly of the waters of Case Inlet, the fractional remainder of the section (227 acres out of the usual 640 acres in a complete section) was considered more difficult to manage than other state trust lands. Such trust lands were sometimes leased to individuals or businesses to provide income for state trust beneficiaries.

Joe and Emma Smith

Joe Smith grew up on a wheat farm in Washington’s Palouse country and became a journalist and Populist Party activist there in the 1890s. Smith volunteered for duty in the US Army during the Spanish-American War in 1898 and served in combat in the Philippines during that conflict. He simultaneously covered the war as a reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. His articles established Smith as a renowned journalist, and he settled in Seattle, marrying Emma Fonner after his discharge in 1899. Joe continued to be politically active, supporting campaigns for public utilities, direct legislation by initiative and referendum, and exposing political corruption.

In 1911, Smith entered into an agreement to lease the state trust lands in Section 16. The timber was harvested from the land, and Smith planted flower bulbs and seed plants to begin a horticultural farm. In March 1919, he left his journalism career in Seattle and the family moved to the leased land at Whiteman Cove, which he named Joemma Beach, a contraction of their names. At the time, it was a remote place which he described in his newsletter, the Joemma Bulletin:

"Joemma is only three miles and a half from the ferry landing at Longbranch, but visitors who travel it the first time during the winter season insist that the surveyors who measured it are mistaken. About this season of the year we usually mark the channels with floating buoys and install lighthouses at the most dangerous points. We do a little work on it from time to time to keep it passable for sea gulls and submarines. We keep promising ourselves that we’ll gravel it some day, but as yet it resembles the famous road that is said to be paved with good intentions. We extend a standing invitation to our friends to call on us, but warn them to wear their hip boots and skid chains and carry three days’ rations to guard against emergencies."

Joe and Emma Smith welcomed visitors to the beach, which they described as “the finest sandy bathing beach on the interior waters of Puget Sound.” They rented out a dozen simple cottages and began a successful direct mail business distributing the bulbs and seeds produced in the gardens. The Joemma Bulletin developed into a catalog-magazine filled with his thoughts, humor, gardening tips, and horticultural product sales, reaching a circulation of 4,000 in the mid-1920’s.

Financial and health problems during the Great Depression forced Joe and Emma to return to Seattle, and the lease of the property was discontinued. Emma passed away in 1949, and Joe died in 1962.

Public Land Becomes Public Park

The Washington Department of Natural Resources developed a primitive public recreation area on the trust lands, called the Whiteman Cove Recreation Site. When Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated three days before the planned June 9, 1969 dedication of upgraded facilities at the site, Commissioner of Public Lands Bert Cole ordered the name changed to Robert F. Kennedy Recreation Site.

The area lacked an on-site manager, and facilities deteriorated, causing closure of the site in 1989. Also in 1989, the legislature authorized the Trust Land Transfer Program. The legislature funds the transfer of state trust lands with special ecological or social values that have low income potential out of state trust ownership to a public agency that can manage the property for those values. Money from the transfer provides revenue for the trust beneficiaries and is used to buy productive replacement properties that will generate future trust income.

On January 24, 1995, the Robert F. Kennedy Recreation Site was transferred to the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSPRC). The $1.2 million purchase price for the land and timber was paid to the trust by a legislative appropriation to the Trust Land Transfer Program. On March 10, 1995, the WSPRC heard testimony from local residents, and officially named the new park Joemma Beach State Park. The park dedication ceremony was held on April 26, 1995.