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

The first humans arrived in the Puget Lowland around 10,000 years ago. They were the ancestors of the Coast Salish people—known on Whidbey Island as the ‘Skagit’—who had at least three permanent villages in Penn Cove on the island’s eastern shore, including one near present-day Coupeville. The Skagit and their neighbors fished and gathered shellfish in Penn Cove and throughout the Salish Sea. In nearby prairies and forests they hunted game and birds, and collected plants such as berries and camas bulbs, a vital food source when salmon were not spawning. They maintained open prairies with controlled burns to sustain native plants used for food and basket materials; tribal communities held rights to specific areas, including prized blue-camas meadows. European explorers arrived in the late 1700s and soon began exploiting the area’s abundant natural resources. In 1850 the Donation Land Claim Act was passed, offering free land in the Oregon Territory to white migrants who occupied and cultivated it for at least four years. Settlers moving west quickly claimed the fertile prairies for farming, while the indigenous Skagit were moved to reservations.

Colonel Isaac N. Ebey was one of the first permanent white residents on Whidbey Island. He originally went west from Ohio during the California gold-rush, then headed north to the Oregon Territory. After arriving in the Puget Sound region, he worked for the US Customs Service. In October 1850 he moved from Olympia to Whidbey Island and claimed 640 acres (259 ha) overlooking Admiralty Inlet. The rest of his family followed in 1854, including his wife and children, parents, siblings and several cousins. Isaac and his brother Jacob established a highly productive homestead. Word of their success drew more settlers, and within a few years the best prairie land on Whidbey Island was claimed. It was common among indigenous Northwest Coast peoples—including the Chinook, Coast Salish, Haida, Tsimshian and Tlingit—to conduct slave-raiding expeditions. Raiding parties traveled in large dugout canoes for up to a thousand miles. The biggest of these could carry 100 warriors and their equipment. In 1856 the US warship Massachusetts was called to defend the settlement at Port Gambell from a raiding party of Tlingit from Kuiu Island in Southeast Alaska. The skirmish resulted in the deaths of 27 Tlingit, including a chieftain. A retaliatory raid, led by a chieftain’s brother, then returned seeking ‘Boston’ heads. The raiders stopped at Ebey’s Landing, shot Isaac Ebey, beheaded him and escaped before anyone could respond. In 1858 the Hudson’s Bay Company vessel Beaver found Ebey’s scalp at the Tlingit village of Kake, though 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: