Every year I try to make it out the the end of
Ediz Hook to collect survey data to add to a multi-year monitoring study of beaches in Washington State. Since the whole of the end of the Hook is part of a US Coast Guard base, its not just a simple matter of driving out there...it takes a bit of set up. But its always fun and interesting. My trip out there this year was last week, and I figured it also offered a stellar opportunity to provide some perspective on changes to the Hook to complement
my earlier post on Ediz Hook. Notably, the end of Ediz Hook used to host a lighthouse,
built in 1865 and subsequently modified a few times. For this post I want to focus on this photo, dated to the 1880's and presumably shot from the lighthouse tower, looking landward along the Hook:
There really isn't much trace of the lighthouse or its associated buildings out at the end of Ediz Hook anymore, but there are a few more modern storage buildings...and one of them has a flight of stairs that allowed me to get up pretty close to where this photo was shot ~140 years ago. Here is what the view looks like now:
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Photo by Ian Miller, collected 9 June 2020 |
Ediz Hook is so heavily modified...you have to really use your imagination to get a sense for what an amazing habitat it must have been. I would love to be able to go back to when the 1880's photo above was shot and take a look around.
It would be incredible to go back in time and see the entire peninsula and how it looked back then. Just imagine the diversity you would see all around you.
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