McMicken Island State Park – state parks quest #25

McMicken Island is an unusual marine state park. Marine state parks in Washington are typically defined as those on islands only accessible via water, by boat or seaplane. But tiny McMicken is reachable by foot, tied to the much-larger Harstine Island by a tombolo, a bar composed of sand and gravel that connects an island to the mainland or another island. The word is Italian and means “bolster” or “pillow,” and at low tide the tombolo provides foot access to the island.

Glacial origins

That McMicken exists at all has to do with glaciers, specifically the Vashon Lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet that shaped much of Puget Sound as we know it. Glacial advance moved from north-northeast to south-southwest through the area. McMicken’s boat-like shape aligns perfectly with the glacial striations, the island’s “bow” pointing north-northeast.

As the ice sheet advanced 16,000 years ago, it scraped the land surface, producing the striations visible on the photo above, and compacting the material underneath, a mix of gravel, sand, clay, and silt. As Puget Sound filled with water, waves pushed sediment around. Wave movement offers two explanations for tombolo formation. A “longshore drift” tombolo forms when the sediment is pushed at an angle to the shore, piling up and eventually creating a bar. A “wave refraction and diffraction” tombolo occurs when waves, moving around the island toward shore, pick up sediment. As the waves meet on the shoreward side of the island, the sediment is deposited, eventually creating the tombolo. A knowledgeable friend suggested McMicken’s tombolo was probably formed by longshore drift. The shallow lagoon directly south of the tombolo may eventually fill with sediment and McMicken will become a peninsula off Harstine Island.

Just 12 acres, McMicken is one-one thousandth the size of neighboring Harstine, a glacial afterthought. To get to the island, we walked a short trail downhill through the forest, at time steeply, from the Harstine Island State Park parking lot. The trail ends at the beach, and it’s a wet, slippery mile to the tombolo over seaweed-slick cobbles spiked with rough barnacles. It’s not a place for canvas sneakers. Except for a couple of deer and a kingfisher hunting for breakfast, we were alone on the beach.

Tidal influence

As we approached the tombolo, we saw it was already above the water line. The tide was on the way out, from a high of +12.53 feet at 6:16am. Low tide at -2.14 feet would arrive at 1:36pm, so we planned to be off the island by late afternoon, which gave us plenty of time to explore. Understanding how tides work is key to safely visiting McMicken on foot, and not for the first time I was struck by the large tide differential, the distance between high and low tide. 

Growing up in New Jersey and spending summer vacations on the Jersey shore, I was accustomed to small tide differentials. A two-foot differential between high and low is typical; three feet is big. On Puget Sound, though, tide differentials of 15 feet aren’t uncommon. That’s a 15-foot difference in water level between low and high tide—a lot of water. On the day we went to McMicken it was 14.67 feet, which meant the tombolo would be high and dry for several hours before and after low tide.

Understanding tidal current, the horizontal flow of water caused by the change in the height of water effected by the tides, also helps. The shape of the Puget Sound coastline affects the tidal current. The narrower the constriction and the bigger the change in water height, the faster the tidal current. The fastest tidal currents, such as those at The Narrows or Deception Pass, are called “tidal races.” Tidal races are so fast that boats must wait for a “tide gate,” the window of time during they can safely pass. I was fascinated to learn that tidal currents do not flow at the same speed throughout the tidal cycle. The water moves fastest halfway between high and low tide. At high and low tide, the current slows to a standstill, known as slack water. You can tell which way the tidal current is flowing by looking at boats at anchor; their bows point into the tidal current.  

McMicken Island sits in Case Inlet, a wide and shallow-ish arm of Puget Sound. Not many rivers empty into it, so the water volume is mostly determined by the tides. The tidal current is fairly weak, and knowing how to read tide charts is essential.

On the tombolo

I wasn’t sure what to expect when we stepped onto the tombolo. Its top was a natural walking trail, wide and flat. At midmorning, the tide was still retreating, and the boats tied up to moorage buoys around the island were showing signs of life. The strains of Lady Gaga belting out songs from A Star is Born provided an unwelcome soundtrack as we crossed the tombolo. Despite the pandemic, several boats were tied together in a makeshift party float, and we watched as people aboard clambered around, unaware or uncaring that their loud music might not be appreciated by the growing numbers of people arriving for a day visit.

The experience embodies my hesitation about heading to parks during the pandemic. On the one hand, the refuge provided by parks and trails is essential to my mental and physical health. But the prospect of conflict with inconsiderate users — who wants to tussle with belligerently unmasked parkgoers, really? — has meant that I’ve sometimes chosen to avoid parks in favor of potentially less crowded places. Nevertheless, I expected to encounter a few folks at McMicken, and we did. Most of them kept to themselves. Perhaps they, too, did not appreciate the unavoidable blare of music from the party boats.

Exploring McMicken

Evidence of geologic history is apparent during an easy circumambulation of the island. As the Vashon Lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet retreated about 15,000 years ago, a mix of sand, gravel, clay, and silt was smeared underneath 200-foot-thick ice. Layers of clay are visible in the exposed bluffs on McMicken’s north side, off of which most boats were moored.

Making our way to the quieter south side, we had views of the Key Peninsula, Case Inlet, and Mount Rainier. We walked around a small private inholding, the only area of the island not accessible to the public, and found ourselves back at the tombolo.

Hidden interior

The hiking trail in McMicken’s interior is short and brushy, a worthwhile contrast to the beach. Just past the space-age vault toilets, a narrow, little-used trail heads into the grove of impressive trees that crown the island. Keeping an eye out for poison oak, we pushed through a tangle of tall huckleberry and Oregon grape and in short order completed the circular route.

McMicken mystery

We dawdled a bit, sitting on the rocks and enjoying the warm sunshine, but ultimately the music pulsing from the party boats frayed my patience. Heading back, we stopped to watch clams spouting in the shallow lagoon formed by the south side of the tombolo, an entertaining way to pass the time.

As I watched Mr. Adventure dodging squirting water, I wondered about the private inholding on the island. Was the owner the source of the island’s name? The short answer is no. The private land is owned by a family with long roots on McMicken. 

The origin of the island’s name is much harder to determine.

The 1838-1842 U.S. Exploring Expedition, known as the U.S. Ex. Ex. or Wilkes Expedition for its commander, charted much of Puget Sound as part of an effort to settle the geopolitical boundaries of the Pacific Northwest. It was the first U.S. government expedition to the region since Lewis and Clark more than 30 years earlier, and many of the artifacts and specimens collected during the voyage are housed in the Smithsonian.

Part of the expedition sailed Puget Sound in 1841-1842, sprinkling names on the landscape like confetti. Among the more than 200 places named by the expedition are inlets (Case, Hammersley, Carr, Totten), bays (Elliott, Commencement), and passages (Pickering, Dana, Agate). 

Of Case Inlet’s five islands, three (Harstine, Stretch, and Herron) were named by the expedition. Harstine Island was named for Lieutenant Henry Hartstein, a member of the Wilkes Expedition. The island appears as Hartstene and Harstene on older nautical charts, evidence of confusion about spelling and pronunciation. The state legislature made the current spelling official in 1997, and today it’s usually pronounced har’-steen. Herron bears the name of the expedition’s barrel maker; Stretch, the gunner’s mate. Reach Island was initially called Oak Island (it’s not on Wilkes’s charts at all), but the U.S. Board of Geographic Names renamed it in 1979 to coordinate with its near neighbor, Stretch Island (locals call it Treasure Island; go figure). But what about McMicken?

Stui to McMicken

Wilkes’s chart, published after the expedition’s conclusion, showed what he labeled “Stui Island” in “Case’s Inlet.” A 19th-century source suggested Stui was a Coast Salish word meaning “falling on the ground,” but I’ve not found any verification of that definition. 

Expedition journals don’t explain the name, but it’s likely an Anglicization of a southern Lushootseed word used by local peoples. Searching an online Lushootseed dictionary turned up nothing useful, even when I tried spelling variants that might represent what Wilkes’s crew heard from indigenous peoples, likely ancestors of today’s Squaxin, Twana, and Sahewamish tribes. A friend thought Stui might be a diminutive form (given its tiny size, that makes sense), but the name remains a mystery.

Likewise the origin of the island’s current name. Its appearance as Stui in Wilkes’s charts is the last Euro-American mention of it until 1889, when it shows up on a map as McMicken. Folklore has it that William McMicken, Washington Territory’s Surveyor General from 1873-1886, named it for himself. If true, it doesn’t show him in a flattering light. What kind of egotist names an island after himself? McMicken held various prominent posts in the territory and state of Washington. The timeline is important here. 

William McMicken came to Washington Territory in 1871. Two years later, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him Territorial Surveyor General, a post he held until 1886. He served as territorial treasurer from 1888 to 1889, then practiced law and worked as a tideland appraiser. In 1898, President William McKinley appointed him State Surveyor General, a position he held until his death the following year. It’s possible McMicken named the island for himself at some point during his first term as Surveyor General, but if so we might expect to see the island labeled on a map before 1889. A Key Peninsula News reporter recently dug deep into this mystery, finding that although the island had been surveyed by 1887 the name didn’t show up on a map until two years later.

Other possibilities

McMicken enjoyed camping. Two articles in the Washington Standard at that time note General McMicken and his wife, Rowena, had a “camp, in the country” in Mason County. Almost all travel during that era would have been by water.  At least one Mosquito Fleet ship stopped at Ballow, a small settlement on Harstine Island just south of McMicken, so perhaps the McMickens’s summer camp was in that area and McMicken named the island to memorialize his family’s favorite getaway.

The island might have been named for his younger son, Maurice. A lawyer with wide-ranging business interests, Maurice McMicken was a passionate boater who helped found the Seattle Yacht Club in 1892. In 1909, he launched the MV Lotus, the largest pleasure cruiser on the West Coast, during the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. At 85 feet long, the luxurious Lotus was Maurice’s preferred home during summers spent cruising Puget Sound. It’s plausible that as Maurice began his career in the mid-1880s, General McMicken named the little island to honor his nautical son. MV Lotus, now dwarfed by the mega-yachts of Seattle’s tech elite, floats elegantly at her berth on Lake Union, available for tours, weekend teas, and private events in pandemic-free times.

Another possibility, and the one I think most likely, is that employees in the Surveyor General’s office named the island for their boss. Samuel Berry served as chief clerk and James Tate Berry served as U.S. Deputy Surveyor under William McMicken. Both conducted surveys in Mason County between 1882 and 1884 and could have named the island in the course of their work. 

The mystery endures 

We may never know exactly when, by whom, and for which McMicken the island was named. The Surveyor General’s Olympia office burned to the ground in 1883, incinerating the records stored there. The puzzle only adds to the enjoyment of wandering McMicken’s rocky beaches and inland forest. Washington State Parks purchased most of the island in 1974 for $133,000, creating the marine state park that you can visit on foot today. Just check the tides first.

Fast facts about McMicken Island State Park

• 12-acre day-use marine park (222 acres including tidelands)
• 1,661 feet of saltwater shoreline
• 5 moorage buoys
• hiking trail
• vault toilets
• beachcombing, shellfishing and crabbing (license required), birdwatching
• park information

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