What we see today of Whidbey Island is a narrow "sand bar", almost 60-miles long. The "bar's" average elevation is about 220 feet above present day sea level; geologically "anchored" at the north end, near Deception Pass, by our only exposed underlying rock. This rock anchor is partially reponsible for the "sand bar".

About 70,000 years ago, during the most recent (last?) glacial period, a huge ice sheet, up to 3,000 feet thick, expanded southward from upper central British Columbia, scouring the landscape like a giant bulldozer while creating the basin that was to become Puget Sound. This "Vashon lobe" of the main continental ice sheet, scooped out the area between the Cascade Mountains and the Olympic Mountains. The Vashon lobe "grew" as far south as present-day Olympia.

In vegetated areas around the periphery of these glacial activities mastodons, and their near relative, the woolly mammoths roamed the basin, grazing. Beach explorers have found bones and teeth of these animals. Near Scatchet Head a tusk and some leg and rib bones were found along the cliff sediments south of Maxwelton Beach. No "Ice Age" human archaeological sites have been discovered. However, near Coupeville a nearly complete "Clovis" spear point was found; typical of those widely used in the western United States some 10-15,000 years ago; presumably for hunting large mammals, like mastodons. 14,400 years ago, world temperatures began reversing and for the fourth time in this Quaternary Ice Age, warming weather caused our local ice sheet to retreat northward. Melting icewater flooded the soon to be Puget Sound basin, until in conjunction with rising sea levels, ocean waters breached the gap and connected the Pacific Ocean to Puget Sound. The Strait of San de Fuca was thus formed about 12,500 years ago with Whidbey Island the natural fragment left by meltwater following the glacial retreat.

Shortly thereafter, as grasses and primitive plants aided in the development of soils capable of supporting the next ecological succession - trees. The first such succession are pines; only later appeared the trees that make up the major softwood forests that to this day characterize Whidbey. These conifers include, especially, the Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata) - the reddish evergreen with "feathery" bark; and a false-fir, the Douglas fir (Pseudosuga menziises), that along with hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) still dominate the Whidbey landscape. Still later successions developed in deeper, less acidic soils. During these few thousand years a generous marine ecology of diverse plants and animals developed on the foreshore, intertidal, beach and upland areas. We can speculate that very shortly thereafter some groups of the people then hunting around the edges of our ice sheet found their way onto the island. Unfortunately, archaeological evidence of early hunters is rarely preserved in concentrations significant enough to be "re-discovered".

As long ago as 2,000 B.C., permanent encampments of "natives" were established on the more protective coves. Salmon, clams, mussels, and other shellfish, as well as roots and berries, probably were included in local diets. Our permissive, mild environment had, by about 1,000 years ago, attracted some highly-organized bands of very competent canoe-making seafarers; especially those tribes in the Queen Charlotte Islands area. Their major activity (sustenance being so easily provided by nature) was raiding their southern neighbors occupying by then most of the larger islands of Puget Sound. Early in the 18th-century, Europeans "discovered" Whidbey during the many "voyages of discovery" that characterized the period. A century and a half later "colonists" began to exploit the rich natural resources that native had exploited for millenia. This began a fascinating history of the importance of Whidbey Island in settling the Northwest (see "Colonization of the Northwest" by Regnar R. B. Kearton, Ph.D.).

From 1900 on, the Town of Langley became the center of island activity as a major supplier of cord wood for the hundreds of steam vessels that provided transportation in a time when few roads existed. Timber became the major economic activity, but as land became cleared, farming come into its own. Fruit orchards and dairying dominated the agricultural economy until World War I, when the island emerged as a prominent turkey-growing area with more than 300 such farms by 1925. The "seamy" side of Whidbey's history occured during Prohibition. This large, remote island, close to a big metropolitan area, but having very low populations was handily located for smuggling whiskey between Canada and the U.S.; a local source for "cash money" at a time when there was little. Economically poor but self-sustaining, yet with remarkably mild weather and rather low rainfall because of the "rain shadow" effect, Whidbey was finally exploited by the U. S. Navy to become important to U.S. war efforts.

In 1942 a naval airbase was constructed north of Oak Harbor, and a second large seaplane training base on Crescent Harbor, plus an "outlying" field near Coupeville, a bombing range, torpedo-ranging station and radio installations on nearby Smith Island. These activities brought Whidbey into the twentieth-century, a "cash" economy, and independence from unreliable farming.

Since the 1960's, the pattern of Whidbey as a huge forest dotted with rural, dispersed homesites has, with the exception of the City of Oak Harbor, established our current land use pattern. More recently the proportion of new residents who are retirees, grows annually. Both north and south have become enclaves of rural "sanity" for those wishing to escape the frenzy of urban life.

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