Deception Pass State Park - Oak Harbor National And State Park

Oak Harbor
Washington, USA

Deception Pass State Park is located nine miles north of Oak Harbor, nine miles south of Anacortes on Fidalgo and Whidbey Islands on State Highway 20, in Island and Skagit Counties. Heart Lake Natural Forest, Hoypus Point Natural Forest, CCC Interpretive Center at Bowman Bay.(Washington State Parks) Oak Harbor, like the rest of Whidbey Island, Washington, is truly American. In late December 1849, three adventurers, Taftson, a Norwegian, Freund, a Swiss Army Officer and Sumner, a "yankee" met in what is today Olympia, Washington and traveled by canoe to a spot known as the "Big Spring" on Crescent Harbor in Oak Harbor. The three adventurers climbed the bluff, surveyed the harbor to the west and took the "free land" which stretched from Crescent Harbor to "Freund's Hill" as homesites. An outstanding feature of the "harbor" was the forest of oak trees that stretched south to the north shore of Penn's Cove, near Coupeville. An early 1850's settler by the name of Dr. Lansdale named the new townsite "Oak Harbor" for the Garry Oaks trees that forested the area. As for the first adventurer's, Sumner did not stay long in the harbor area; Taftson died an embittered old man after his two small sons, borne to him by an Indian wife, died in an epidemic of measles. ... more on GoingToTheBeach.com, Inc.