Tatoosh Island, the largest in a small group offshore from Cape Flattery, hosts a historic light station on the Makah Reservation, about 34 miles (55 km) north of La Push and 6 miles (10 km) west-northwest of Neah Bay, Washington. Cape Flattery is the northwesternmost point of the contiguous United States and the oldest European-named feature in Washington state. Captain James Cook named it on March 22, 1778, reportedly in honor of its sheltered harbor. The Makah—the southernmost branch of the Wakashan linguistic group, which includes the Nuu-chah-nulth on Vancouver Island—historically inhabited most of the cape. They used Tatoosh Island for summer fish camps and foraged its rocky ledges for octopus, mussels and other mollusks. The mainland coast is marked by rugged cliffs and exposed shore platforms at low tide. The northwestern portion of Cape Flattery features massive sandstones and conglomerates along the cliffs and on Tatoosh Island. Known as Cape Flattery breccia, these rocks consist of sediments from a source near Vancouver Island, deposited in an ancient submarine fan. During the late Pleistocene and Holocene the coast experienced significant shifts in land elevation and sea level. The land was depressed during the Last Glacial Maximum (17,000 to 10,000 years ago), causing a relative sea-level rise, followed by post-glacial rebound after deglaciation. Tectonic uplift and subsidence along plate margins—when the Juan de Fuca Plate passed beneath the North American Plate—further reshaped the coastline. Meanwhile, a slow global sea-level rise continues. Covering about 20 acres (8 ha), Tatoosh Island lies 0.5 miles (0.8 km) off Cape Flattery and is a geological extension of the cape, connected by submerged rock platforms and ledges. Rising to roughly 100 feet (30 m), the mostly treeless island offers only three hazardous boat landing spots, often unusable because of prevailing winds and tides. As part of the Makah Reservation, access requires written permission. Its geological and cultural significance make Tatoosh Island an intriguing landmark for historians and naturalists alike.

A Makah summer village on Tatoosh Island hosted several hundred residents from March to August. They ventured from its shores to hunt whales and other sea mammals and to fish for salmon, halibut and ling cod. In 1774, Spanish explorers named the island Isla de Punto de Martinez in honor of Juan Jose Martinez, the navigator on the Santiago, which sailed with Juan José Pérez Hernández along this coast. In 1778, Captain John Meares—an Englishman in the maritime fur trade—hove to off the island at the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. His vessel was soon surrounded by large canoes carrying 20 to 30 men armed with bows and arrows tipped with bone and spears fitted with mussel shells. Their chief was known as Tatooche, and Meares recorded the island as either Tatooche or Tatoosh on his charts. These charts later influenced Captain George Vancouver, popularizing the name. Some suggest the name ‘Tatoosh’ derives from To-tooch or Tu-tutsh, the Makah term for ‘Thunderbird,’ a figure of potent mythological significance. James G. Swan, a 19th-century ethnographer who lived among the Makah for three years, recorded the island’s Makah name as ‘Chadi.’ He speculated that it was named for Tatoochatticus, a powerful northern Nuu-chah-nulth chief who, along with Maquilla and Callicum, dominated the straits region. In 1855, Governor Isaac Stevens of Washington Territory and leaders of the Makah Tribe signed the Treaty of Neah Bay. Under its terms, the Makah ceded all their lands to the United States except for a small area on Cape Flattery reserved for the tribe.

In 1857 a lighthouse—known as Cape Flattery Light—was built on Tatoosh Island. It comprised a Cape Cod-style sandstone dwelling with a kitchen, parlor and dining room on the first floor and four sleeping rooms on the second. From the dwelling’s center rose a brick tower 65 feet (20 m) tall, and gutters channeled rainwater into a cistern, the island’s only water source. The lighthouse stood at the island’s highest point, 97 feet (30 m) above sea level. An iron lantern room at the tower’s summit, 165 feet (50 m) above sea level, housed a navigation beacon with a first-order Fresnel lens 10.5 feet (3.2 m) tall, built in Paris by Louis Sautter & Company. The beacon displayed a fixed white light visible for 20 miles (32 km). Winter storms often sent sea spray high enough to coat its windows with salt. In 1872 a fog signal building with a 12‐inch (30 cm) steam whistle was added. In 2008 the lighthouse was decommissioned in favor of a 30‐foot (9 m) skeleton tower fitted with a solar-powered LED. The US Coast Guard removed generators and fuel tanks in 2009 and returned the island to the Makah Tribe. Tatoosh Island’s rocky ledges and platforms provide ideal habitat for a diverse array of marine algae and invertebrates. Its isolation, climate and location in the ecologically productive northeastern Pacific also make it a prime site for scientific research. Since 1967 the University of Washington has conducted marine ecology studies to examine species interactions. Robert T. Paine partly based his concept of keystone species on research here, which explained the relationship between the seastar Pisaster ochraceus and the mussel Mytilus californianus. This work demonstrated how environmental changes and species extinctions can disrupt the entire food web. Read more here and here. Explore more of Tatoosh Island and Cape Flattery here: