Bay View State Park – state parks quest #49

The Artist and I arrived at aptly named Bay View State Park as the sun was sinking, casting long shadows through the trees as we set up our tent. “It smells so good,” I said, inhaling the evergreen-infused salt air. When we checked in at the ranger station, we’d asked what we should do in the short time we had at the park. “Watching the sunset is popular,” she said. A short walk through the forest and under the road overpass brought us to the beach, Padilla Bay blushing peach and lavender reflected from the sky. Kids threw rocks into the water with satisfying plunks, and clouds streamed off the distant Olympic Mountains. Once we were on the beach, it was as if gravity increased, slowing our pace and encouraging us to sit still.

A group of tweens sat at a picnic table, listening to camp counselors go through some rules. “No exclusive relationships,” we heard one say. “Cell phones are a privilege that can be revoked.” A small plane flew overhead, and we could hear the hum of traffic from Highway 20 a few miles south across Padilla Bay. The sun disappeared beyond the San Juan Islands on the horizon, and we strolled back to camp.

A desirable homesite

Bay View wasn’t always so tranquil. The site was the home of Noo-wha-ah leader Pat-teh-us, a signer of the Point Elliott Treaty in 1855. The Noo-wha-ah had a large village on Edison Creek, about five miles north, but a smallpox epidemic in the 1830s devastated the tribe, killing as many as 80 percent of the people. Two decades later, the treaty opened their lands to settlement. By the 1880s, perhaps a dozen logging camps lined Padilla Bay as trees were cleared from nearby Bay View Ridge. 

William McKenna, Jr., who’d moved to Washington for the 1880 Ruby Creek gold rush in the North Cascades, gave up on prospecting and eventually platted the Bay View townsite, opening a store there to supply the camps. By the turn of the century, more than 400 people lived in Bay View, many working for the Ballard Lumber Company, which had purchased 1,700 timbered acres on Bay View Ridge.

Trees, then farms

Around 1900, a number of Indians were homesteading in the area when whites reportedly burned their crops and homes, forcing them to disperse into the nearby Lummi, Swinomish, Upper Skagit, and Samish tribes. A 1909 fire wiped out most of Bay View, at nearly the same time as Ballard Logging was paying its workers for the last time. The trees were gone, and the company sold the land for $1000 per 40-acre lot. As the trees had been cut, farmers had moved in, with settlers diking the flats to keep saltwater out and turning the lower Skagit Valley into the agricultural region it is today. Amidst these changes, native peoples continued to fish and gather shellfish from the beach at Bay View, and their large, carved canoes were commonly seen on Padilla Bay into the 1920s.

A local park for the state

In 1925, local resident Annie Klingenmeier bequeathed land to the Skagit Valley Agricultural Society for a park in Bay View. A baseball diamond and horse racing track offered diversions for locals. At this point, there are several versions of how the state park came to be. The simplest story is that the Agricultural Society donated the acreage to the state for a park. Another narrative says the park was held by people who’d bought ownership shares, and the group agreed to give those shares to the state. In any case, by the middle of 1925 the state of Washington owned about 16 acres, the core of what is now Bay View State Park. State Parks added more land in the 1960s, and the park now covers 66 acres.

Explore the Skagit Valley and beyond

While the park offers excellent camping and a lovely beach, its proximity to nearby nature makes it a convenient base for exploring the area. Learn about the second-largest eelgrass meadow on the north Pacific Coast at the Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve‘s interpretive center, just a half-mile north of the park. To the south, the 2.25-mile Padilla Bay Shore Trail allows visitors to explore the biologically rich estuary on foot or bike. It’s possible to camp at the park, then bike into Mount Vernon for the Tulip Festival. Bay View is a perfect base camp to explore the Skagit Valley or, as we did, as an overnight stop before catching a ferry to the San Juan Islands. Just give yourself enough time to enjoy the sunset.

Fast Facts about Bay View State Park

• 66-acre camping park, open year round
• 1,285’ saltwater shoreline on Padilla Bay
• Discover Pass required, $10 daily or, for a very reasonable $30, purchase an annual pass
• 46 standard campsites, 30 partial utility sites, max length 50’, group camp, six cabins, reservable online or by calling 888-CAMPOUT
• restrooms, showers
• picnic tables, grills, fire pits
• hiking, biking along the Padilla Bay Shore Trail nearby
• beach shelter available to rent
• boating (public launches nearby), kayaking, sailboarding, swimming, beachcombing, diving, fishing, shellfishing (license required)
• birdwatching, wildlife viewing
• boating facilities (moorage buoys, docks)
• park brochure
• park map

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Land Acknowledgment

Bay View State Park occupies the traditional and unceded lands of Coast Salish peoples, including the Noo-wha-ah or Nuwaha, who have lived, traded and travelled here since time immemorial. Historically, Noo-wha-ah leader Pah-teh-us lived on the park site; he was one of the signers of the Point Elliott Treaty in 1855 although the tribe was not given a reservation. The Noo-wha-ah were known as “cliff dwellers” by the Lummi, Nooksack, and Semiahmoo peoples and as Stucktabshes (“Stick Samishes”) by the Swinomish and Samish peoples. Decimated by epidemics in the 1700s and 1800s, the Noo-wha-ah were displaced from their traditional lands by white settlers. By 1918, some remaining Noo-wha-ahs had merged into the Samish people, who had a village just north of the Noo-wha-ahs. The Samish, along with the Kikiallus, Lower Skagit, and Aboriginal Swinomish peoples, are part of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community under the terms of the Point Elliott Treaty. The Swinomish Reservation is a few miles southwest of the park. Today many Noo-wha-ah descendants continue to live in the lower Skagit Valley.

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