Ebey’s Landing is a strand on the southwest coast of Whidbey Island on Admiralty Inlet in northern Puget Sound, and the site of a historic pioneer homestead, about 45 miles (72 km) north-northwest of Seattle and 2 miles (3.2 km) south-southwest of Coupeville, Washington. The beach site is named for Colonel Isaac Ebey, who in 1850 filed a land claim and built a homestead under the Donation Land Claim Act and farmed the area now called Ebey’s Prairie. Like most of the Puget Lowland, this area is dominated by sediments and lacks bedrock exposures. Some of the sediments were deposited during the Olympia non-glacial period that ended when ice of the Vashon Stade advanced approximately 19,000 years ago and covered this area with a thickness of 3,900 to 4,300 feet (1,189 to 1,310 m). Around 16,850 years ago, the ice began retreating northward and the proglacial Lake Russell developed. By about 16,000 years ago, Lake Russell and the Strait of Juan de Fuca became connected. Evidence suggests that an ice margin stabilized at present-day Coupeville that lasted long enough for till-like outwash deposits to accumulate, creating Ebey’s Prairie.

The first humans arrived in the Puget Lowland around 10,00 years ago. They were the ancestors of the Coast Salish people, on Whidbey Island known as the ‘Skagit‘ who had at least three permanent villages in Penn Cove on the eastern shore of Whidbey Island including a settlement in the area of present-day Coupeville. The Skagit and their neighbors fished and harvested shellfish from Penn Cove and the surrounding waters of the Salish Sea. In nearby prairies and forests they hunted game and fowl, and they collected plants such as berries and camas bulbs, a food staple especially when salmon were not spawning. They maintained the open prairies using fires to sustain native plants that provided food and materials for making baskets. Tribal communities maintained rights to specific areas, including choice blue camas meadows. European explorers arrived in the late 1700s and soon thereafter started exploiting the abundant natural resources. In 1850, the Donation Land Claim Act was passed promising free land in the Oregon Territory to white immigrants who occupied and cultivated the land for four years. Westward migrating settlers quickly staked claims to the fertile prairies and began farming, while the indigenous Skagit people were moved to reservations.

Colonel Isaac N. Ebey was one of the first permanent white resident on Whidbey Island. Ebey originally went west from Ohio during the California gold-rush and then headed north to Oregon Territory. After arriving in the Puget Sound region, he went to work for the U.S. Customs Service. In October 1850, Ebey moved from Olympia to Whidbey Island and claimed 640 acres (259 ha) overlooking Admiralty Inlet. The remainder of Ebey’s family followed in 1854 including his wife and children, parents, siblings, and a few cousins. Isaac and brother Jacob Ebey’s homestead would prove to be very productive and word of this fortune attracted more settlers, and within a few years, the best prairie farmland on Whidbey Island had been claimed. It was a traditional practice of the Northwest Coast peoples including the Chinook, Coast Salish, Haida, Tsimshian and Tlingit peoples to conducted raiding expeditions to acquire slaves for forced labor. Raiding parties traveled in large dugout canoes for distances of up to a thousand miles. The largest of these canoes could hold 100 warriors and their equipment. In 1856, the U.S. warship Massachusetts was called to assist in the defense of the settlement at Port Gambell that was being threatened by a raiding party of ‘Stikine’ Tlingit from Kuiu Island. The skirmish resulted in the death of 27 Tlingit, including a chieftain. A retaliatory raid followed, led by the brother of the killed chieftain, who was reputedly looking for ‘Boston’ heads. The marauders stopped at Ebey’s Landing, shot Isaac Ebey, cut off his head, and escaped before anyone could respond. In 1858, the Hudson’s Bay Company Beaver found Ebey’s scalp at the village of Kake, but it was not recovered until the following year by Captain Charles Dodd on the steamer Labouchere. Read more here and here. Explore more of Ebey’s Landing and Whidbey Island here: