This park takes its name from the family of Egbert and Betty Beeksma, recognizing the business they began on the site and their contribution to the development of Oak Harbor. Egbert Beeksma was born in the Netherlands on April 10, 1905, moved to Whidbey Island in 1911, and his family first settled in what is now Ault Field north of Oak Harbor before later moving into Oak Harbor. He married Elizabeth “Betty” Nienhuis, daughter of Charlie and Anna Nienhuis, who had come to Whidbey Island in 1895 from Holland, Michigan. After Egbert was injured in a logging accident and spent six months recovering in a hospital, he returned to Oak Harbor in 1927 and bought the gas station on this site. Gas there was pumped by hand and water came from an artesian well, and the intersection soon became known as Beeksma’s Corner. Egbert first met Betty at the station when she wanted to charge her first gasoline purchase; after requiring her to return with cash payment, he invited her on a date, and they married on June 19, 1928. In 1944, the Beeksmas sold the station to Allen and Barbara Vanderzicht, Betty’s sister, and moved their family and home to a new forty acre farm in east Oak Harbor. Egbert then spent the rest of his career as a carpenter and contractor, building some of the buildings on the Seaplane Base, some commercial buildings in Oak Harbor, most of the homes on the residential lots he developed on his farm, and many custom homes throughout Oak Harbor, after eventually developing the farm into residential lots. After Betty died in 1979, Egbert married his widowed sister-in-law Barbara Vanderzicht, who still owned the gas station on this site, returning the site to the Beeksma family by marriage. The property remained in Beeksma family ownership until the State of Washington and Oak Harbor pursued a road expansion of SR-20. Egbert Beeksma died on September 23, 1990, and descendants of Egbert and Betty still live in Oak Harbor.