Shifting Shorelines
by Annie Johnson
From the 1890s through the 1920s, waterborne traffic thrived on Bellingham Bay as lumber schooners, steamboats, ocean liners and freighters carried their cargo between the port city and other ports on the West Coast. As the community around the bay grew, buildings and marinas replaced the trees and tideflats.
Richard Vanderway, curator of education at the Whatcom Museum of History & Art, said he thinks the past is important to people in Bellingham.
“It’s important to them to know where they came from and why people are here,” he said.
Thousands of years before Europeans saw Bellingham Bay or set foot upon its shore, the Lummi called the area home. Throughout their existence, the
Lummi people have relied on the bay, particularly for fishing, as the mainstay of their culture and survival.
“Bellingham Bay is one of the areas the Lummi have traditionally fished,” said Leroy Deardorff, deputy director of fisheries for the Lummi Nation. “From what I understand, the area was used in our culture as winter fishing grounds. Lummi’s feel they own the bay and they’d like to see it restored.”
The first Europeans to explore the Northwest Coast found themselves in a region distinct in climate, flora and fauna. They met people who were equally distinct in culture. People have been on the coast for at least 9,000 years, according to Wayne Suttles’ and Kenneth Ames’ “Pre-European History.”
The Lummi, like other Northwest Coast Native Americans, were foragers, living on fish, game and wild plants. They had permanent villages with wooden houses, socially stratified societies and highly developed art and ceremonies.
The first recorded European discovery of Bellingham Bay was in 1792 by Capt. George Vancouver. Vancouver came to the area as part of an effort to strengthen Great Britain’s claims in the Northwest and weaken the claims of Spain and Russia.
Vancouver’s ships were too large to explore the bays and inlets of the area. While the large sailing ships anchored in Birch Bay, north of Bellingham Bay, rowboats took to the local waters on charting trips. On June 15, 1792, two boats under the leadership of Lt. Joseph Whidbey rowed into the inlet now known as Bellingham Bay. Vancouver named the bay after Sir William Bellingham, controller of the storekeeper’s accounts for the British Navy at the time.
When Whidbey and his men rowed into the bay, they saw trees measuring upwards of 200 feet lining the shore. These trees would play a large role in the
future settlement of the area.
Europeans would again enter the waters of the bay. On Dec. 15, 1852, two Lummi Tribal members, Ts’likw and Chowisut, canoed Henry Roeder and Russell Peabody into the bay. Roeder and Peabody arrived with the hope of erecting a lumber mill to supply the state of California with building supplies.
Roeder built a lumber mill at the mouth of Whatcom Creek, near the present day site of Maritime Heritage Park. The creek provided power for the mill and easy access for ships.
Roeder and Peabody named the area they settled Whatcom, after the Lummi word for the creek, which means noisy water. As word of the area’s natural riches spread, the European population grew.
Four towns, Whatcom, Sehome, Bellingham and Fairhaven, dotted the shore of Bellingham Bay. The population of the West Coast was increasing and the
rest of the country was beginning to rely on its resources of timber, fish and coal. Lumber and shingle mills, salmon canneries and shipyards eventually developed around the bay.
The northern part of the bay was a large tidal flat. The town of Whatcom had a dock that stretched a mile from the shore to deep water where the steamers would come in. On June 3, 1892, Secretary of War Stephen Elkins approved a system of three dredged waterways — Whatcom Creek, Squalicum Creek and I and J Waterways — to eliminate the need for the long docks, and marked those areas for future dredging, bulkheads and piers.
As the area around Bellingham Bay developed, the four towns began to grow together. Many citizens advocated incorporating into a single, larger and more efficient city.
On Oct. 27, 1903, after a few failed attempts, the citizens finally agreed to consolidate into one city — Bellingham.
City planners worked to develop the waterfront. Between 1904 and 1910, local authorities and the Army Corps of Engineers dredged Whatcom Creek Waterway and used the sediment to fill much of the area around the head of the waterway for street development. In 1920, the citizens of Bellingham voted to authorize the formation of the Port of Bellingham. The purpose of the Port was to create and manage economic development in the county. The Port brought new industry to the bay including the Intalco Aluminum Smelter in 1966, the oil refineries at Cherry Point in 1971 and the San Juan division of the Puget Sound Pulp and Timber Company in 1926.
Former Port Director Tom Glenn saw a lot of change on the bay while working for the Port from July 1958 to January 1984. He played a large part in the development of the inner Squalicum Harbor and what is now known as the Bellwether Peninsula. Glenn said the Port intended the development to provide more moorage for commercial vessels, especially fishing boats, and expand commercial activity, which would in turn provide economic stimulus for Bellingham.
“The plans we had drawn as early as 1960 showed docks, wharves and fish processing,” Glenn said. “We expected to have three of those (fish processing plants) around what’s now the Bellwether Peninsula. A shipyard was going to be where Zuanich Point Park is.”
Today, the Hotel Bellwether, upscale shops, restaurants and offices fill the peninsula.
Glenn credits the formation of Western Washington University’s Huxley College of Environmental Studies with getting the Port to look at the environmental aspects of their actions. Huxley was formed in 1968 and the Port started the application process for the development in 1969. Glenn said Huxley students raised questions about the environmental impacts of the project, which the state required the Port to answer before it would issue the required permits. The
questions caused delays and the Port did not receive a permit for development until 1979.
“Our project was delayed more than 10 years,” Glenn said. “Why? Because our society was finally being made aware of environmental degradation being brought upon us by projects such as this. Up to about 1965 there wasn’t the slightest idea there was something wrong with the filling in of the tide lands.”
In the past 30 years, Bellingham has begun to move away from its industrial heritage. The legacy of 16,000 creosote-coated pilings, unregulated industrial dumping and landfills created from municipal waste has made Bellingham Bay one of the most polluted bodies of water in the United States, according to the Washington State Department of Ecology. Today, both the city and the Port are working with state and federal agencies and private industry to mitigate the environmental damage done in the past.
In 2003, the City of Bellingham and the Port formed the Waterfront Futures Project with the goal of identifying possibilities for future development and creating a plan to implement these possibilities.
Project Director Patricia Decker said the most realistic ideas at this point include moving waterfront industry not dependent on the water to other sites in Bellingham and Whatcom County. At the same time, commercial enterprises such as passenger ferries to the San Juan Islands, hotels and shopping centers would take industry’s place. Decker said the development would allow for the creation of more green spaces along the waterfront.
She said the group understands the history of Bellingham. People came to Bellingham because of the bay and the water continues to be an integral part of the
area’s character.
“We know where we came from and we’re working to identify where we want to go,” she said. “We just need a little bit of structure to get there.”
