Shi Shi Beach Fifty Years Later, A Beacon of Hope

On the eve of this year’s summer solstice, two friends and I hoisted backpacks onto aging shoulders and trekked through a lush coastal spruce forest to Shi Shi Beach on Washington’s northern Pacific coast. It’s a pilgrimage we’ve undertaken yearly with various comrades over the past half-century or so. Our modest ambition is to witness the far northern sunset and early sunrise from this strikingly beautiful wilderness beach in Olympic National Park. Our visit also sets us up for welcoming in the summer, whatever it will bring.

Our party shifts as the years accrue. Old friends are forced to hang up their boots for one reason or another. Some have passed on. But it’s a particular charm of this two-and-a-half mile stretch of unbroken shoreline that night tides wash the beach clean by morning. Misty dawns reveal sandy reaches empty of human tracks. One can imagine setting forth in a world that is new.

The configurations of last winter’s storms have re-scattered driftwood logs, smoothed swales and terraces, and graded reaches into broad boulevards of gleaming sand. Gulls take to the air with first light, and cormorants and oystercatchers trace the far breaking waves.

Shi Shi, with its sea stacks and wave-carved rocks at Point of the Arches, was one of the first places I visited when I settled on the Olympic Peninsula in the fall of 1972. I had spent most of that post-college year hitchhiking and backpacking, exploring the wild and iconic places of the West. After five years in the city I was hungry for the beauty and open spaces. When a friend described this beach as the most beautiful on the West Coast, I signed on for a trip. No matter that it was the dark of December and storm season was having its way with the coast.

Nor did I suspect that that first trip would lead to another, eventually luring me into a year-long stay in a cabin south of Point of the Arches — or a four-year campaign to have Shi Shi and Point of the Arches permanently protected by Olympic National Park.

Fifty years ago this autumn, Shi Shi Beach, Point of the Arches, and the east shore of Ozette Lake were added to the park by Congress. This was not only a victory for the conservation organizations that worked for the effort but for an unlikely coalition of local activists, urban conservationists, distinguished Northwest artists, legislators both Democratic and Republican, and timberland owners. All coalesced to preserve a spectacular yet unprotected reach of Olympic Peninsula coastline.

When I first visited Shi Shi, the seven-mile stretch of coast between the Makah Indian Reservation and Cape Alava in Olympic National Park was the corporate property of a half-dozen timber companies. Adjoining lands were being actively logged, and roads and clearcuts were moving relentlessly toward the coast.

In the years prior to that, several prominent Northwest artists began to visit the remote and little-known shoreline. Sculptor and painter George Tsutakowa (known worldwide for his sculpted fountains), fine-art photographer Johsel Namkung, sculptor Richard Beyer (creator of the much-loved “Waiting for the Interurban” sculpture in Seattle), and poet Robert Sund among them. Through their works and shared enthusiasms, the beauty of Shi Shi and Point of the Arches was introduced to the Seattle conservation community.

Before long, I was mustered into the campaign to save this last wild reach of Olympic coast. Photographer Steve Johnson, Robert Sund, Peninsula College botany professor Ed Tisch, and others had started a letter-writing campaign to build support for adding the northern coast to Olympic National Park. Steve Johnson in particular worked tirelessly sending impassioned, hand-written letters paired with his stunning black-and-white photographs to senators, congressmen, agency officials, local government representatives, conservation organizations, timber company executives… anyone he thought could help. He frequently followed his missives with personal meetings.

By the early 1970s Steve’s efforts began to yield results. He recruited U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas to the effort as well as Washington Justice James Dolliver, then chief of staff to Governor Daniel J. Evans.

It was a disorganized and scattershot approach to be sure, mounted by a scruffy band of environmental greenhorns. But when Olympic National Park conducted its master plan hearings in November of 1973, Steve’s work helped ensure that Peninsula College’s theater was filled.

Representatives from Olympic Park Associates, Sierra Club, The Mountaineers, and other Seattle-based conservation organizations joined speakers from the Olympic Conservation Council, Klahhane Club, and other local advocates in making a strong case for Shi Shi, Point of the Arches, and the east shore of Lake Ozette. When the park released its master plan the following year, those areas were identified as priority future acquisitions.

It’s a long trek from grass-roots organizing to permanent land protection. Then as now it depends on collaborative negotiations and bipartisan political support. Fortunately, Governor Evans took a personal interest in the area. He directed James Dolliver, to meet with timber companies and find a feasible way forward. Conservationists didn’t get all we were asking for; we rarely do. But with the landowners on board, Evans and Dolliver drafted a bill that was introduced in the Senate by Scoop Jackson and in the House by Congressman Don Bonker.

So a bill, lobbied by country enthusiasts and their urban colleagues, drafted by a Republican governor and sponsored by two Democrats sailed through both houses of Congress. It was signed into law by a Republican president 50 years ago.

Summer Solstice fell on a Saturday this year. My friends and I noted the day-long stream of hikers arriving at the beach that day. Shi Shi has become the most heavily visited coastal area in the park. I doubted any of them were aware of the collective effort that led to the area being preserved. They didn’t need to be. I could see their body language as they dropped their packs and gazed down the length of the beach to the sea stacks and arches at its southern end. I recognized the gestures of wonder.

As we founder on for public wildlands protection in this harshly divided moment, it’s useful to remember how good things were brought about in the past. Good, too, to imagine how they might be again.

Photo by Chuck Easton.