Shine Tidelands State Park – state parks quest #23

To get to Shine Tidelands State Park, most visitors will cross the highly scenic Hood Canal Floating Bridge, which connects the Olympic and Kitsap peninsulas and marks the entrance to its namesake 68-mile-long fjord. Just after the bridge, a short, sandy road bumps to a few parking spots, with a portable toilet on the far side, at the foot of a tree-covered slope. We got out of the car, stretched, and looked around. Spring was barely 18 hours old, the blue sky promising a mild day. A handful of picnic tables are strewn on the berm above the tide line. Shine Tidelands’ rocky beach beckoned. The clear water mirrored the sky, and a large headland rose in the middle distance.

We started walking. An eagle hunched in a winter-bare tree above the access road. Drift logs littered the shore, pushed into a long, parallel line by tides and storms. A woman walking her dog passed us, perhaps turned back as we were by a tangle of trunks and branches from trees that had skidded down the steep hillside. Turning back, a family had come to let their squirrelly kids and two dogs burn some energy. It’s a nice place to walk your dogs and find some pretty purple-lined shells.

Mr. Adventure suggested we drive up to what, on the posted sign, looked like another section of the park. At least it would get us beyond the beach-blocking dead trees. We got back in the car, drove a little more than a mile, and parked in a not-really-a-lot just up from the beach.

Two state parks, lots of signs

Clustered on posts at the entrance to the beach, signs pointed right to Shine Tidelands and left to Wolfe Property State Park. Others spelled out shellfishing rules and regulations (know your limits! fill your holes!), and a flimsy paper sign tacked to the side listed rules for anglers.

Stepping onto the beach, we walked past stacks of skiffs stored upside-down like something on a Caribbean postcard. The forest hugged the shore close, and woodsmoke drifted through the green overstory. We passed several private homes snugged in the trees. Straight across narrow Bywater Bay more houses peeked from the forest on Hood Head, the headland we’d seen when we first parked. That explained the stacked boats.

We followed the beach as it curved toward Hood Head, where more boats bobbed just offshore. The headland is attached to the mainland by a strip of sand and rock. Beyond lies Admiralty Inlet and open sound. The headland is private property except for a quarter-mile strip of tideland at the tip, Point Hannon. But to reach that small public area on foot, we’d have to cross private property.

Walking isn’t an option because in Washington, most tidelands, the area between the high and low tide lines, are private property. This is what makes an otherwise unassuming park like Shine Tidelands so important: public access to public tidelands, of which there are few remaining on Puget Sound and Hood Canal.

Aquatic lands in Washington

Washington distinguishes among three types of aquatic lands: saltwater tidelands; salt- or freshwater bedlands, which are always submerged and navigable, and shorelands, the submerged lands at the edges of freshwater lakes and rivers. Tidelands and shorelands are typically attached to the upland portion of the property parcel.

With their rich beds of wild shellfish, tidelands were a main source of sustenance and culture for regional indigenous peoples, who know, “When the tide goes out, the table is set.” When Washington achieved statehood in 1889, the federal government entrusted these aquatic lands to the new state. To raise revenues, the state allowed individuals and companies to purchase aquatic lands, a practice that continued for more than 80 years. Shellfish were a lucrative natural resource and important industry. By the time the state halted the sale of tidelands on Puget Sound and in the Strait of Juan de Fuca in 1971, more than two-thirds had been transferred to private ownership. 

Tideland ownership

Private ownership of tidelands means these lands aren’t accessible by the public. And private owners can be testy about people walking on their tidelands. I’ve never been on a Puget Sound beach that didn’t have prominent signs announcing where private property begins, usually with dire warnings about trespassing, guard dogs, and even gun-toting “self-defense,” as if beach strollers were some kind of shell-gawking invading force. Thus, most of the beaches on Puget Sound — the very thing that makes Puget Sound so beautiful and attractive as a place to live — are not available to the vast majority of residents living near them. From an outdoor recreation standpoint, that’s a big gap in available recreation space.

Protecting shorelines

In 1971, the state legislature, concerned about unrestricted development along the state’s shorelines, recognized the rapidly shrinking tidelands resource needed protection and passed legislation that ended the selling practice. The Shoreline Management Act (SMA) focused on tidelands in the Salish Sea, the name for the inland sea comprising Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the Georgia Strait in British Columbia. The SMA designated three “shorelines of statewide significance,” including the Pacific Coast (already protected for public access by the 1967 Seashore Conservation Act, which I wrote about in an earlier post), all other areas of Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and several specific estuarine areas, one of which is Hood Canal. The law requires that state-owned shorelines be managed to preserve their natural character and protect their ecosystems, to prioritize statewide over local interests, to increase public access to publicly owned shorelines, and to increase recreational opportunities for the public.

Tideland management

Management of public tidelands is a layered affair in which at least five state agencies play a role. At Shine Tidelands, Washington State Parks provides recreation access, maintenance, and facilities, including the portable toilet, picnic table, and parking area. The adjacent Wolfe Property State Park is, in the vocabulary of State Parks, “undeveloped,” which means it’s open to the public, but there are no facilities and you’re pretty much on your own while there. State Parks acquired the first 130 acres of the now 249-acre property in 1967 for $315,000.

Both Shine Tidelands and Wolfe Property offer shellfishing, for which you need a license. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is happy to sell you one. The agency also seeds the tidelands with manila clams and oysters for your gustatory delight, and posts the best shellfishing tides on its website. This year, a biotoxin outbreak closed shellfishing in the spring, but it may reopen in 2021. You’d think, understandably, that Fish and Wildlife decides if the beds are safe for harvest, but that’s actually the purview of the Washington State Department of Health. 

The state Department of Natural Resources manages 2.4 million acres of the state’s aquatic lands, including tidelands, as a trust. Some are leased to shellfish companies or recreational providers, and DNR uses some of the revenue to ensure continued protection and public access. DNR may lease tidelands in front of state parks only with the approval of the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission, the seven-member, governor-appointed board that oversees the state park system. This isn’t an issue at Shine Tidelands, because Fish and Wildlife seeds the tidelands for recreational shellfishers.

The Department of Ecology works with public and private entities to implement regulations related to aquatic lands, including tidelands. State agencies work with federally recognized tribes, who have treaty rights to harvest shellfish on both private and public lands, although actually doing so is a complicated process.

A scarce resource

None of this was obvious to us as we strolled the shoreline toward the strip of land leading to Hood Head. A local homeowner told us that the sand strip is called a tombolo, a word Mr. Adventure gleefully glommed onto and which has become part of his vocabulary. The bay narrowed and shallowed as we neared the tombolo, where a few people sat on the sand soaking up the sunshine. We turned back, admiring the view toward the bridge and pausing to investigate interesting shells here and there. It wasn’t until I got home and started digging that I learned how scarce a resource public tidelands are.

Using the Department of Ecology’s rabbit-hole-inducing interactive Coastal Atlas, I counted 65 points of public access on Hood Canal. Of those, 17 are boat-in only and five are undetermined (that is, no details are provided). Forty-three are accessible by car, but at many of these, parking is along the side of the road and access is down a steep slope.

Besides a handful of county parks and campgrounds, the easiest access to public tidelands is at state parks. Nine state parks dot hook-shaped Hood Canal’s 213 miles of shoreline, from Shine Tidelands, at the entrance, to Belfair at the far end. Together, those nine parks encompass 2.3 percent of Hood Canal’s total shoreline, or five miles.

Five measly miles!

That’s why public ownership of and access to tidelands is so critical, and why places like Shine Tidelands and other tidelands state parks are so precious.

Fast facts about Shine Tidelands State Park

• 249-acre day-use park, open year-round
• $10 daily parking pass (buy the annual Discover Pass, a bargain at $30)
• 5,000 feet of tidelands along Bywater Bay
• portapotty in parking area at southern entrance
• picnic tables
• beachcombing, fishing, shellfishing (license required)
• boat launching (primitive, no vehicle access)
• birdwatching, wildlife viewing
• park map

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