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Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Samish Island History 101, taught by my pal Dylan

"That's not an island. We drove to it."

I try to explain to my husband that the land-bridge wasn't always there and how Samish Island is indeed an island. But in the back of my mind, I was asking myself... "Well, IS it?"

So I asked Dylan to back me up. Dylan, now a successful PDX businessman, hosted a Christmas Eve seafood party at his mom's warm waterfront home. He grilled Blau oysters and laughed with us about the Christmas Eve caroling firetruck that kept circling the island. We sucked crab meat from fresh crabs, also from Blau's, and we listened to Dylan tell us about the island he grew up on.

5 comments:

  1. awwwww, was eating Blau oysters part of his master plan to save Alex? hahah.

    also. samish island, I don't consider it an island. i DO consider it the place all the bitchy smart book cute girls came from.
    (beth, naomi, marie, xica, heather, ashley... think about it. there was a type.)

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  2. Oh the Island my last bit of shelter in the valley. I love that place more than most.

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  3. Yes, we were a complete island once again last January. That was when the flooding cut us off for 3-4 days. There were some hardy fools to attempted to cross over to the "mainland", some made it, some wound up in the over-top-of-the-banks ditches. I like being on an island that you can drive to...
    Thanks for coming over on Christmas Eve, Michelle; it was delightful to see you and to meet your hubby!

    From A Timeline of Samish Island History: http://www.samishisland.net/si_historytimeline.html

    1908 - Samish Island was a real island in the early century, separated from the mainland by the South Fork of the Samish River. A channel about 1/4 mile wide connected Alice Bay on the East to Padilla Bay on the West. The channel was deep enough for tug boats to use. A wooden bridge spanned it, but the buggy and later the Model T, had to negotiate some muddy marsh on either end of the bridge. It was no place to be in high tide. Gladys Squires says you could tell who lived on Samish by the rust on the underside of their autos.

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  4. And just another quick note from the Samish Island History website: 1932 - Skagit County builds a a fill across the Samish Slough, the salt marsh area between Alice and Padilla Bays, to construct the present roadway to the island. This action blocks the river outlet to Padilla Bay, forcing the Samish River to go north around the island. Samish Island becomes a peninsula off the mainland. (Samish Island newsletter, February 1994 and February 2002)

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  5. and I thought Ayrn was my only reader...

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