From 1855 to 1857, unrest in the Puget Sound region led early Whidbey settlers to build seven blockhouses, including additional defenses after Isaac Ebey was shot and beheaded by southeast Alaskan Kake Indians in 1857 as retribution for the loss of twenty-seven Kake tribal members during relocation talks on the US Navy steamer Massachusetts the previous year. The 1855 Alexander Blockhouse, later moved from John Alexander’s farm to a site next to the Island County Historical Museum in Coupeville, protected the island’s first three families. The 1855 Crockett Blockhouse, one of two stockaded blockhouses that still remain, was moved slightly southwest of its original site, while another blockhouse went to the 1909 Yukon-Alaska Pacific Exposition. The 1857 Ebey Blockhouse was one of four at the corners of a stockade around the Jacob Ebey house, and Jacob Ebey’s son Winfield used it as the first law office on Whidbey Island. The 1857 Davis Blockhouse, built by John Davis first as a cabin and then modified after Isaac Ebey’s death, remains on its original site with a chimney fireplace originally made of stick and mud. In 1921, the Ladies of the Round Table began a ten-year restoration of the decaying Davis Blockhouse, with Fred Krueger carefully replacing rotting beams while preserving its clay-and-stick fireplace, and they persuaded Island County Commissioners to take ownership and long-term care, after which the commissioners expanded Sunnyside Cemetery with a new Blockhouse plat. By 2007, the Davis Blockhouse again required major restoration, and Island County Cemetery District No. 2, assisted locally by the Coupeville Lions Club, cleaned the building, replaced rotting logs with period methods, repaired an earlier restoration problem by using a gravel-and-fieldstone foundation to conceal cement footings, and embedded a steel brace in supporting beams to strengthen the roof.

Photo: Barry Swackhamer

Photo: Barry Swackhamer

Photo: Barry Swackhamer

Photo: Barry Swackhamer

Coupeville, Washington · USA