Scenic Beach State Park – state parks quest #24

“Oh, wow.” I’m sure that’s a typical reaction of visitors when they reach Scenic Beach State Park’s 1500 feet of saltwater shoreline. I tried to say something eloquent as Mr. Adventure and I stepped onto the beach and looked at the Olympic Mountains across Hood Canal, but I just kept repeating, “Oh, wow.”

The park sits on the west side of the Kitsap Peninsula, just under four miles from the Olympic Peninsula on the other side of the water. To the northwest is Dosewallips State Park, the village of Brinnon, and the entrance to Dabob Bay. A few miles beyond Brinnon is Mount Walker, which like Scenic Beach is notable for both its expansive views and its understory of native Pacific rhododendron, a leggy, long-leaved evergreen shrub that sports pale pink blossoms in May and June. While the woods at Scenic Beach State Park are lovely and serene, let’s face it, this place is about the view.

The Emel House

Not much is known about the first two land claimants at Scenic Beach. The first filed in 1882, and one Charles Hall purchased the land in 1903 and built a small house within ten years. Joe Emel, Sr., whose parents had emigrated from Minnesota, came to stay. He bought out Hall and in 1923 expanded the original house into a handsome Craftsman-style structure that commands a world-class prospect of Hood Canal and the Olympic Range from its site on the bluff above the beach. The Emel House, now run by the Seabeck Community Club, is one of the oldest homes in the area. 

The house was closed when we visited, but a modern kitchen and event space visible through the windows hint at its popularity for weddings. The fireplace, and probably the piers and foundation, are made of ballast stones. Depending on which story you believe, these were left by 19th-century sailing ships when heavy cargo was loaded aboard, hauled from the canal floor, or leftover from ships built in the 1870s and 1880s by the Washington Mill Company in Seabeck. Whatever the source, the large, rounded stones solidly anchor the house to the bluff.

Scenic Beach Resort

In the late 1920s, Joe Emel, Sr., opened Scenic Beach Resort, an auto camp with cabins on the perimeter of the lawn near the house. It was one of several auto camps on Misery Point, the point of land that juts into Hood Canal like a crow’s head in profile. Along with the nearby Maple Beach and Miami Beach resorts, Scenic Beach offered visitors a chance to dip their toes in the water, cast a line in hopes of a salmon dinner, and enjoy the panoramic vista of the Olympic Mountains.  

Emel ran the resort until his death in 1959. Area residents, concerned that the land would be sold to a private developer, asked State Parks to purchase the property for a public park.

The demand for recreation spurs response

The timing was propitious. At the time, the state was contending with rising demand for recreation. From 1950 to 1960, visits to Washington state parks alone had increased more than fourfold, from 1.6 million to 7 million, reflecting a national postwar trend.

Congress responded to this national trend by creating the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission (ORRRC) in 1958. The ORRRC had three jobs: figure out recreation needs now and through the turn of the century, identify resources available to meet those needs, and recommend policies and programs to ensure those needs were met. Despite its tongue-twisting name and unmemorable acronym, it’s fair to say that the ORRRC created the paradigm within which outdoor recreation operates today. 

For example, in recommending the creation of the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation (BOR), charged with helping states develop more outdoor recreation opportunities, the ORRRC set up a means by which federal resources could be made available for states. Those resources largely came via the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), a grant-in-aid program that to this day funds state and local outdoor recreation projects. Created by Congress in 1965, the LWCF was also the brainchild of the ORRRC. 

ORRRC: more money, more sites

The ORRRC’s final report, issued in 1962, pulled no punches. States needed to do more. They should provide expertise to local governments, and “[a]ll levels of government must provide continuing and adequate funds for outdoor recreation.” The ORRRC knew it would be a heavy lift: “In most cases, this will require a substantial increase over present levels.” So it recommended several funding devices, including the sale of bonds to finance land acquisition and improvements, user fees, and using “uncollected refunds of gasoline taxes paid by pleasure boat owners.” 

That last funding source is particularly relevant to Scenic Beach, because the ORRRC also declared that “water is a focal point of outdoor recreation.” Beyond boating, swimming, and fishing, people preferred to picnic, hike, and camp near water. The demand for water-based recreation far outstripped the amount of land available for it. Many more waterfront recreation sites were needed, and using uncollected marine fuel tax revenue was one way to pay for them.

Washington citizens overwhelmingly vote to pay for recreation

Spurred by the ORRRC report and citizen activists who seized the moment, in 1964 Washington voters passed Referendum 11, an outdoor recreation bonds issue, by an 18-point margin. They also approved Initiative 215, the Marine Recreation Land Act, to address the need for more waterfront recreation land. The act created the state Interagency Committee on Outdoor Recreation (IACOR), composed of state agency directors and citizens, and charged it with identifying and acquiring waterfront property for recreation. Significantly, the act also funded this mandate, setting aside a portion of unclaimed marine fuel tax refunds for this purpose.

Marine fuel tax is part of the tax paid for gasoline in Washington state. Most of the gas is purchased for use in cars and trucks, and most gas tax revenue funds roads, bridges, and ferries. A small amount of gas is purchased for boats, and because boats don’t impact roads the way vehicles do, the marine fuel gas tax is refundable. The process is fairly simple — there’s a form to fill out on the state Department of Licensing website — but for many the refund amount is insignificant relative to the cost of owning and operating a boat, and a significant portion of the available monies go unclaimed.

The Marine Recreation Land Act stipulated that no more than 2 percent of the unclaimed monies should go into a Marine Fuel Tax Refund Account. That might not sound like a lot, but in fiscal year 2019 about $1.7 billion in gas tax was collected, and about 1%, or $9.5 million, went into the marine recreation land account. That’s not peanuts. The IACOR (now called the  Recreation and Conservation Funding Board and housed in the state Recreation and Conservation Office), administers the money, distributing grants to state agencies and other public bodies like municipal governments for the acquisition and stewardship of marine lands.

The bronze plaque

Now I understood what the Interagency Committee for Outdoor Recreation was, and why it appeared on a plaque dedicating Scenic Beach State Park Recreation Area in 1975. Walking on the park road, we’d come upon the bronze tablet mounted on a concrete plinth. “Scenic Beach State Park Recreation Area,” it read. “Dedicated 1975, Daniel J. Evans, Governor.” The names of the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission members and state parks director are listed below. At the bottom, a line reads, “Cooperating Agencies: Interagency Committee on Outdoor Recreation.”

But I had a question. If locals asked the state to develop a park here in the early 1960s, and State Parks acquired the first parcel in 1963, why was it not dedicated until 1975? I wanted to find out.

Here’s what I learned. What started in 1963 ended 18 years later, when the state purchased the last of three parcels that comprise the park. That 17-acre piece, which increased the park’s saltwater beachfront by half (535 feet), cost $350,000. Half of the money came from a Land and Water Conservation Fund grant administered through the Interagency Committee for Outdoor Recreation.

LWCF, then and now

Which brings us back to the LWCF. If the name sounds familiar, you may have heard about the Land and Water Conservation Fund in the last few years, because its continued funding and existence was in peril. Between 1964, when Congress established the LWCF, and 2014, it has provided more than 40,000 grants to the tune of $16.7 billion for state and local projects. In Thurston County, where I live, the LWCF has paid for parks (including one I can see from my  window), boat launches and docks, play fields and park facilities, historic preservation projects, and wildlife and game ranges. It has paid for recreation projects where you live, too. Most LWCF monies come from federal taxes on offshore oil and gas leases. It is arguably the most important source of federal funds for recreation projects in the United States.

Which is why so many outdoor recreationists were outraged when some Republican members of Congress announced they refused to support reauthorizing the LWCF when it came up for renewal in 2015, calling it a “slush fund.” After more than 50 years of funding recreation and conservation nationwide, the LWCF expired in September 2018.

Conservation groups made permanent authorization of the LWCF a primary policy goal, achieved with passage of the John D. Dingell, Jr., Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act of 2019. But the law only provided permanent reauthorization, not funding. Permanent funding was finally achieved in March 2020 when the Great American Outdoors Act was signed into law. A rare example of a bipartisan law passed during the Trump Administration, the Act funds the LWCF at $900 million per year and provides nearly $10 billion over five years to address the horrific maintenance backlog at national parks. 

While President Trump opposed reauthorizing and funding the LWCF, he was apparently swayed to sign the legislation because of the perceived political boost it would give to at-risk Republican senators such as Cory Gardner of Colorado (who nonetheless lost his reelection bid to former Gov. John Hickenlooper). Given that the president was unable to correctly pronounce “Yosemite” during the bill signing, I feel pretty confident that he has no particular love for the LWCF or outdoor recreation. Still, I’m glad the LWCF has permanent funding.

Small park, big story

Scenic Beach, then, is a small park that’s part of a big story. When we found the park dedication plaque, I had no idea the rabbit hole I’d go down was so complex. Yet now that I understand a bit more about how this beautiful park came to be, I have a deeper appreciation for the foresight of the ORRRC and its influence on outdoor recreation in Washington state. It is that legacy that allows us to stand on the shoreline at Scenic Beach and say, “oh wow.”

Fast facts about Scenic Beach State Park

• 121-acre camping park
• 1500’ of saltwater shoreline
• beachcombing, saltwater fishing (license required), crabbing, birdwatching
• swimming, diving, kayaking (Nearest boat launch is ½ mile east)
• Fire circles, horseshoe pits, volleyball fields, playground
• 50 standard campsites, 2 hiker/biker, 18 pull-through sites (32’ RV maximum), no hookups, group camp
• restrooms and showers
• park brochure
• park map

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