Blake Island Marine State Park – state parks quest #63

Five things

#1. The Suquamish people frequented Blake Island as a seasonal camping ground. Some believe that Sealth, the Suquamish leader for whom Seattle is named, was born there. The island’s eastern point is a low, pebbly area that lends itself to camping and is called Tatush, which may be a derivation of a Lushootseed word.

#2. By the mid-1800s, Port Madison sawmill operator G.A. Meigs owned the island. He logged the trees and then stopped paying property taxes on it. A common practice at the time, the theory went that logged land was worthless and thus taxes should not be imposed. The bank that had financed Meigs’s purchase eventually foreclosed on the island and other Meigs properties. 

#3. Around the turn of the century, Seattle real estate promotor William Trimble purchased the island, intending to make it a summer retreat for his family. Trimble came to Washington in 1890, and three decades later had become a real estate millionaire. With his wife, Cannie, and their five children, Trimble moved to what he named Trimble Island in 1917 and lived there full-time until 1923. The Trimbles conducted extensive landscape alterations and transformed the island into a beautiful private estate, which Cannie ran as a no-hunting wildlife sanctuary. The Trimbles moved back to Seattle in 1924 but maintained the island as their private retreat until 1929, when Cannie drowned in Elliott Bay. William Trimble never returned to live on the island and it became overgrown. In 1936, Trimble traded the island to the Tacoma-based United National Corporation for a building in Tacoma. In the late 1940s, two South Kitsap High School students boated to the island and built a fire in the long-disused Trimble House fireplace to warm up but apparently neglected to fully extinguish it. The house burned to the ground. Some of the foundation walls are still visible.

#4. In 1958, United National Corporation expressed interested in developing a luxury resort on the island. State Lands Commissioner Bert Cole objected and worked out a deal where the state gave $250,000 worth of timber in Mason County to the company in exchange for 355 acres and 14,000 feet of tidelands on the island. The state already held 120 acres on the south end as common school trust land, so the 1959 deal placed the entire island into state ownership. That August, the Washington State Board of Natural Resources set aside the whole island for a state park, and State Parks began developing it for recreational use.

#5. Less than two years later, a Seattle caterer named Bill Hewitt approached State Parks with an idea for a tourist attraction on the island that would highlight Northwest Coast Indian arts and  culture, just in time for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. Hewitt built a longhouse, restaurant, performance space, gift shop, 324-foot public pier, and 180-foot floating dock, then gave the facilities to State Parks with the agreement that Hewitt would operate the concession. True to his word, Hewitt opened Tillicum Village in June 1962, in time for the Seattle World’s Fair. Although the village is not associated with any specific tribe, Hewitt hired employees with native ancestry whenever possible, and they enriched the programs offered there, which included a salmon feast, baked over pits inside the longhouse, and a cultural performance highlighting different aspects of Northwest Coast culture. Tillicum Village and Tours held the concession until 2009, when Argosy Cruises took over. Then, in 2020, Covid struck, and tours stopped altogether. By August 2021, Tillicum Village’s future was uncertain. A few months later, Argosy Cruises canceled its contract to operate the concession on Blake Island, so now it’s a marine state park like any other, except for the extraordinary, but now unused,  infrastructure left by Bill Hewitt.

Fast Facts about Blake Island Marine State Park

• 475-acre marine camping park, open all year
• 5 miles saltwater beach
• 44 standard sites (some reservable during summer season), three Cascadia Marine Trail sites, group camp, reservable online or by calling 888-CAMPOUT
• restrooms and showers
• two picnic shelters with fire circle available by reservation, numerous picnic tables and grills, horseshoe pits
• hiking, biking, birding, wildlife viewing, metal detecting
• beachcombing, saltwater fishing, shellfishing, swimming, diving, boating, paddling
• two picnic shelters with fire circle available by reservation
• 1300’ moorage dock, marina, 24 moorage buoys
• Discover Pass required, $10 daily or, for a very reasonable $30, purchase an annual pass
• park brochure
• park map

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Land Acknowledgment

Blake Island Marine State Park occupies the traditional lands of the Suquamish peoples, who have lived and travelled here since time immemorial.

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