Little Washington: A Nostalgic Look at the Evergreen State's Smallest Towns (Tiny Towns) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Nicole Hardina has lived in Washington for over 20 years, in towns big and small. Alaska-grown, she is a Seattle-based writer sharing an apartment with two cats, a guitar, and several overflowing bookcases. Her writing has appeared in Scope, Months to Years, Out There Outdoors, the Bellingham Review, Proximity, and elsewhere. She received a Grant for Artist Projects award from Artist Trust in 2016 and is working on a memoir that is equal parts grief account and love letter to the Pacific Northwest.

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Neah Bay
Population: 994 Unincorporated

People of the Cape

The community of Neah Bay is home to the Makah Tribe and located on the Makah Reservation. The Makah, whose name variously translates as “people of the cape” and “people who are generous with their food,” inhabit their traditional lands, minus the 300,000 acres they lost in the 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay. But unlike treaties between Washington’s territorial governor, Isaac Stevens, and other Indigenous groups, the Treaty of Neah Bay affirmed the Makah people’s rights to maintain their villages and lifeways, including whaling, sealing, and fishing, on land the Makah did not cede.

Sixty years prior to the treaty, Salvador Fidalgo established the first non-Native settle- ment in Neah Bay, but it failed within a year after conflict with the British. The area now known as Neah Bay was at the time called Deah (or Di·ya in Makah), named for Makah Chief Dee-ah. Deah was one of five permanent Makah villages that stretched along the northern and western coasts of what became Washington State.

Pre–European contact, as many as 4,000 Makah lived in these villages. Cedar longhouses 30 feet wide and 70 feet long housed multiple generations of extended families. Summer brought travel to Tatoosh Island, Ozette Lake, and other seasonal camps, fishing grounds, and gathering places. The Makah designed canoes made from western red cedar for whaling, fishing, and war. Selling baskets woven from cedar and grasses became a source of income for the Makah after the treaty and remained important into the 20th century.

From the late 1700s through the time of the Treaty of Neah Bay, diseases introduced by non-Native settlers ravaged the Makah population, and by 1877 the Makah numbered fewer than 1,000 people. Neah Bay was home to an Indian Agency, a reservation trading post, a school, and a lifeboat station. One hundred years had passed since Captain James Cook sailed to Tatoosh Island, and 80 years since a lighthouse went up on the island to guide non-Native sailors through the Strait of Juan de Fuca to and from Puget Sound, to the east. white people began homesteading in Neah Bay in the 1890s. One of the first, a man named W. W. Washburn, established a general store which, after a fire and rebuilding, still stands today as the only store in Neah Bay.

Despite significant losses of both population and land, Makah culture remains vibrant today. The tribe welcomes visitors to their reservation to learn about their past and present.

The Buried Village

Makah legend tells of a great landslide long ago in Ozette, one of the tribe’s ancient villages. In 1969, a winter storm shifted the land again, uncovering preserved artifacts and proving the oral history true, and more than 4,000 hours of painstaking excavation began. In a combined effort between the Makah and Washington State University, archaeologists worked without shovels, using only water from a hose to rinse delicate artifacts clean. Their efforts recovered more than 55,000 artifacts, some of which are now on display at the Makah Museum. Radiocarbon dating of the artifacts demonstrated that the slide that buried Ozette happened 500 years ago. In modern times, the last full-time Makah resident of Ozette left in 1917.

In the Beginning

In the historical imagination, the edge of the land is often said to be the geographical end of the world. The Makah orientation to the land is the opposite. “Welcome while you are in Neah Bay, the beginning of the world and the home of the Makah,” reads their website, translated into English.

Visitor permits are available at several locations in town, including the Makah Museum and Washburn’s General Store. The museum is part of the larger Makah Research and Cultural Center, which encompasses a Makah language and education department, a library and archive, and a historic-preservation office. A full-size gray whale skeleton hangs in the central gallery, the effort of more than 1,000 hours of work by museum staff and Neah Bay High School students after the whales were removed from the endangered species list in 1999. That year marked the first time the Makah had harvested a whale in more than 70 years.

Despite the Treaty of Neah Bay guaranteeing the Makah the right to practice whaling―a deeply spiritual and community-based practice for them― the tribe hadn’t hunted since the 1920s, when commercial whaling nearly drove many species to extinction. In recent years, however, whale populations have made a strong recovery, and the tribe has moved toward recovering the whaling rights first granted to them more than 160 years ago. A decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit mandated that the Makah file a waiver to the Marine Mammal Protection Act before they harvested any more whales. The Makah did so in 2005, and studies by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) determined that population levels could sustain some harvesting, though not the four whales per year that the Makah requested. In 2019, NOAA proposed terms for a waiver valid for 10 years. Until a judge rules on the proposal, whaling remains illegal, but NOAA’s proposal moves the Makah closer to their goal.

As a tourist destination, Neah Bay is popular with fishermen and hikers alike. Just a few miles from the center of town, a short hike through coastal forest leads to Cape Flattery, the northwesternmost point in the contiguous United States. Turning left at the bridge to Hobuck Road leads to Hobuck Beach, a popular campsite and the location of an annual surfing competition. A few more miles down the road, the short but demanding Shi Shi Beach Trail leads hikers through a muddy creekbed to a cliff, recently improved with a set of steps down to a quiet and beautiful beach where rock formations called seastacks weather the waves and wind, and bedrock angles out of the earth like wrecked ships.

A 2-mile trail over boardwalks and bridges and through a typically muddy creekbed yields a reward: Shi Shi Beach, at the edge of the Pacific. Hikers can continue along the beach to Point of Arches or connect with the Cape Alava Trail. Bring a tidebook to avoid getting stranded.

Lava flows accumulated for millions of years to form the basalt cliffs of Cape Flattery, the northwesternmost point of the contiguous United States. Tatoosh Island, just off the coast, is of historical importance to the Makah Tribe. The island is the subject of intense study by climate scientists and wildlife biologists.