Ediz Hook

No trip down the memory lane of Washington's shorelines would be complete without a stop in to consider Ediz Hook.  Ediz Hook is a roughly 3.5 mile long "recurved" spit extending into the Central Strait of Juan de Fuca, the embayment of which forms Port Angeles Harbor.  Ediz Hook hosts a pulp and paper mill, a road, a boat ramp, the Puget Sound Pilot's boat station, and a large US Coast Guard facility.  Not surprisingly, Ediz Hook has been heavily modified over time, and looks considerably different today than it did at the turn of the 20th century.  This view of Ediz Hook (taken from somewhere near modern Crown Park), for example, dates to 1884:

1884 view of Ediz Hook.  Photo is part of the Washington Rural Heritage collection, accessed via the North Olympic Library System.

And here is the modern view from the same perspective:

Photo collected by Ian Miller 19 February 2014

Prominent in the modern view is the pulp and paper mill, first built around 1920.  Harder to see from this vantage are the many other modifications that have turned Ediz Hook from the natural sand spit it was in 1884 into something that many take to be a man-made harbor defense works.  Here is the view down on the beach near the mill, for example:

10 February 2017 photo taken looking west from a point just to the east of the mill shown in the photo above.  Photo collected by Ian Miller

showing the large rock, placed to protect Ediz Hook from erosion, that is now a prominent feature of the Ediz Hook shoreline.