Central Whidbey Island long served as a turnstile in the marine highways linking Georgia Strait, Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the broader Salish Sea, forming the southern end of the Inside Passage, a 1,000-mile waterway among coastal islands from Washington to Alaska. Northwest Coastal Indians traveled these protected waters in cedar canoes to trade and raid within a vast network, and native peoples and fur traders from as far north as Alaska used the route to reach the Salish Sea. After the strait's discovery in 1787, explorers hurried into the Strait of Juan de Fuca hoping it would prove to be the Northwest Passage to Hudson's Bay, and although that hope failed, fur trade vessels sailing to and from China and the Sandwich Islands made fortunes. American immigration and maritime commerce into the American Northwest first arrived by ship around Cape Horn, led by seafaring men from New England and Nova Scotia, and even overland migrants often continued from Portland or San Francisco by vessel to Puget Sound. On Whidbey Island, places tied to this history include the Island County Museum, with Ice Age relics, woolly mammoth remains, Native American canoes, and artifacts of settlement and maritime trade; the historic Coupeville Wharf, once a busy port; Sunnyside Cemetery, where Isaac Ebey and Thomas Coupe are buried and where the Davis Blockhouse stands; the Jacob Ebey House and blockhouse, built beginning in 1855 after Isaac Ebey brought his family to the prairie in 1852; the Ferry House, built in 1860 to support Isaac Ebey's orphaned sons after his death in 1857; and Admiralty Head Lighthouse, built in 1861 and rebuilt in 1903 to guide tall ships toward the Whidbey Island shore.

Photo: William Fischer, Jr.

Coupeville, Washington · USA