Washington Shorelines Now and Then

5/4/21

The Twin "Mole"

Looking west in 2010 from about here on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Photo by Hugh Shipman

This weekend I took advantage of the good low tides to trek out west for a walk on the fascinating shoreline near the West Twin River. A notable feature on this shoreline used to be the "mole" that served a former clay mine that is currently owned by LaFarge North America, and which is the low, pier-like feature in Hugh Shipman's 2010 photo above. This mole was indeed used as a wharf, to load barges of mine material when the mine was active. In 2016 the company removed the mole as part of the requirements associated with their aquatic lands lease, and the Coastal Watershed Institute was contracted and designed a removal approach relying largely on natural erosion to re-distribute the fill material making up the core of the mole. As a result Hugh Shipman's 2010 view looks quite a bit different:

1 May 2021 photo looking west at the former site of the LaFarge clay mine mole.

This is another example of a very short-term, restoration-driven change to the shoreline, similar to the Elwha restoration example posted here.

4/15/21

Changing uses of the shoreline: The Coupeville wharf

A few weeks ago during a brief ice cream stop-over in Coupeville, Washington, I spent a few minutes appreciating the nice little wharf that is a central feature of town. The wharf appears to be primarily given over to tourist use, and the building at the end features public restrooms, and a few small shops. A quick bit of time online, though, revealed that this view I was enjoying was yet another prime example of the changing uses of Washington's shorelines that feature in previous posts. In particular, I found this 1933 photo of the wharf on the Port of Coupeville website:

The wharf was built in 1905 and, not surprisingly, supported the transportation needs of a variety of industries for many decades. In the photo above, for example, a grain tower is visible on the left side (photo perspective) of the building, to support the loading of grain, and the wharf also acted as a ferry landing until the Deception Pass Bridge was built in the 1930's. It wasn't until the mid 1980's that the wharf slowly started to transition into something more like a tourist destination. The Port of Coupeville's website also features a really nice history of this wharf, and its changing uses through time - nearly all of the information for this post came from that site.

3/20/21

Another view of New Dungeness Lighthouse

We’ve visited New Dungeness Lighthouse in a previous post, but it’s such a unique spot, it’s worth looking at from multiple angles. My bucket list goal for this blog is to find a historical photo taken from the top of the lighthouse that looks out toward the end of Dungeness Spit. The reason? Due to the erosion of nearby bluffs and the currents in the Strait of Juan de Fuca that carry the eroded material to the east, Dungeness Spit lengthens by around 15 feet per year. When built in 1857, the lighthouse was only 900 feet from the end of the spit. It’s now more than a half mile from the end. I hope to someday find a historical photo that will allow us to document that growth.

In the meantime, our now and then photos show some of the changes that occurred at the lighthouse itself, which has also evolved significantly over time.

Historical and current view of New Dungeness Lighthouse

Then: 1896, courtesy National Archives / Now: Feb. 2021

Yes, those photos are of the same lighthouse. The tower was lowered in 1927 due to deterioration of the brickwork. So the dark section above is now gone. Many other buildings have been added and subtracted since our Then photo was taken in 1896. Most notably, the keeper’s home was added in 1904 (on the right in the Now photo).

My now photo is from a perspective a little lower in the water then the then photo because I was shooting while sitting on my paddleboard and I presume the historical photo was taken from a boat with a much higher deck.

Seeing the outer fence in the historical photo reminded me of my favorite New Dungeness Lighthouse story. It’s from a book written by James C. Isom, published by the New Dungeness Light Station Association, and aptly titled, History of the New Dungeness Lighthouse. The book tells us that keeper E.A. Brooks (1902-1925) kept cows and sheep on the spit, and apparently the cows weren’t too happy with the location:

“Several keepers likely had cows on the spit, particularly if there were small children…The Brooks family had a cow that would sometimes swim to the mainland in search of better grass. The boys would have to find the cow and drag it home for milking.”

If I was paddling out to the lighthouse and passed a cow headed for the mainland, I think I might have to give up paddling. 😊

Sources:

https://www.sequimgazette.com/news/mother-nature-and-the-dungeness-spit/
https://newdungenesslighthouse.com/the-lighthouse/
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/45708329?&sp=%7B%22q%22%3A%22dungeness%22%7D&sr=1

3/17/21

Changing beaches: Kalaloch

2 March 2014 photo taken of beach wood at the base of coastal bluffs on Kalaloch Beach in Olympic National Park.

This post is a bit different, in that it focused on changes to shorelines over very short time-scales...a few years, probably driven by forces that don't have anything to do, at least directly, with people. It will hopefully come as no surprise that shorelines are one of the most ever-changing landscapes on the planet, subject to pushes and pulls from both the water and the land. They change all the time, so on some level it shouldn't come as any surprise that Kalaloch Beach in Olympic National Park has changed dramatically in the past few years. I wanted to focus on the huge logs that are a very notable feature on the shorelines of Washington State, particularly on the north coast, and that used to pile up at the top of the beach near Kalaloch Lodge. At some point in 2015, the logs accumulated on the beach near Kalaloch Lodge were stripped away, and haven't yet returned:

12 March 2021 photo of coastal bluffs on the beach near Kalaloch Lodge.

We still don't really understand why they were stripped off the beach here, and probably more importantly, why new large wood hasn't recruited back to the beach. Its also not clear if the obvious erosion of the bluff at this location has anything to do with the removal of the large wood. All that we know is that, in the space of just a few short years, the beach looks very different.

3/4/21

Duwamish River - A River with Big Change

The Duwamish River was straightened in 1913 after thousands of years as a natural flowing river whose tributaries originate below Mt Rainier.

Home to the Duwamish people, Herring's House at the mouth to the now Elliott Bay had at least four longhouses and a huge potlatch house.

Below is the Waterlines Project map sponsored by the Burke Museum. The green dots are village sites. Blue are 'named places' or places of importance along the shoreline. View the full map here

The below comparison is from the Duwamish River Clean-up Coalition page, view it here.

Read More about the Duwamish..

Native Seattle, Coll Thrush, UW Press

The River that Made Seattle, BJ Cummings, UW Press

Once and Future River, UW Press

Too High Too Steep, David Williams, UW Press

Chief Seattle, David Buerge, Sasquatch Books

2/22/21

Hollywood Beach in Port Angeles, changing uses of the shoreline

Last year I posted a set of before/after photos of Hollywood Beach in Port Angeles, with a focus on how much large-scale fill has transformed Washington's urban shorelines. This post is going to focus on the same area, but I'm going to try to emphasize the trade-offs, from a cultural and ecological stand-point, associated with that transformation. I feel that this particular photo:

does this job well. This photo, taken from right about here, ended up in my collection, but I don't know a whole lot about it...when it was taken, whose collection its in, etc. (and who should be credited for it; please get in touch with me if you know anything about it). But this photo was definitely shot before downtown Port Angeles was filled around 1913, and gives us some perspective of both the uses (residences, canoes, etc.) and habitat conditions (a relatively broad, low-sloping beach and actively eroding coastal bluff) of this shoreline. The view from this perspective is now radically different:

June 2015 photo looking east along the historic shoreline near Hollywood Beach in Port Angeles

These two photos aren't perfectly aligned, but are pretty close...

2/1/21

Seattle's Ballard Beach Pre-Shilshole Marina and Present Day

Seattle experienced big changes along it's shorelines in the 20th century. In Ballard, Shishole Bay went from a rural gravel covered beach with forested hillsides to fully developed with filled in shores, pavement and residential areas.