Cama Beach State Park
A step back in time on Camano Island
Story and photos by Carolyn Price
One of the best things about going to Camano Island’s Cama Beach State Park is there are no ferry lines to get there.
The second and third best are that it’s a mere 60-mile drive from Seattle and this part of the island gets half the rainfall of Seattle.
But probably the greatest thing about Cama Beach is, well, just about everything!
When I stayed there last April with my family and our daughter’s friend, we headed north from Seattle along I-5, took a left to Stanwood and had barely gotten settled into the car ride when we arrived at Washington State Parks’ newest addition on the southwest shore of the island.
If there was really a way to step back in time, well, this was it.
Rustic, but renovated cedar cabins, dotted the beach. A general store sold local hand-made quilts. A gasoline pump, though no longer in use, stands as a reminder to its 1930s heyday when Cama Beach was a small family resort and fishing village.
I’ll tell you this: it didn’t take long to relax.
Tribal Cultures remembered
For centuries, Native Americans found abundance in the waters off Cama Beach and in the nearby woods where they hunted. By the 1880s, the region prospered with the logging industry. And although the Native people’s presence gradually diminished, their legacy is remembered today through the park’s tribal culture interpretive programs.
Cama Beach started as a family resort in 1934 when Muriel and Lee Risk built cabins and bungalows, bought fishing boats and tackle and opened for business. For decades following, generations of families came back year after year for summers filled with fishing, boating, swimming and relaxing along the Cama Beach shoreline enjoying views of Saratoga Passage, Whidbey Island and the Olympics.
When the Risk’s two daughters took over the property in 1990, talk of turning the area into a Washington State Park began and Seattle’s Center for Wooden Boats was asked to come aboard as a partner. Finally, in 2008, Cama Beach State Park and the Center for Wooden Boats/Cama Beach opened to great fanfare, thanks to the donation of land from the Risk family.
The 33 cabins and bungalows have been refurbished to their original look and updated with green energy heat and electrical systems. The Park has taken great care to lessen the environmental impact at the resort by not allowing any guests’ vehicles beachside. Instead, a Park shuttle van and driver meets guests in an above parking lot and shuttles them and their luggage directly to their cabin.
Beach walking and skipping rocks are favorite pastimes at Cama Beach.
As soon as our bags hit the floor, we couldn’t wait to go exploring. Our first stop was the Interpretive Center where we met Tina Dinzl-Pederson, the park’s interpretive specialist. Dinzl-Pederson and a host of knowledgeable volunteers offer family-friendly activities year-round including nature hikes and beach walks, craft-making that uses materials unique to Cama Beach, and a Junior Ranger Program. Their Heritage Program teaches skills that were used on a daily basis by the original inhabitants, such as making paper from local resources.
The beach was literally steps from our front door and the kids ran up and down the shoreline until they were exhausted. Inside, we ate dinner and played board games, watching the last rays of the day slip behind the Olympics from our cabin window.
We woke to a cloudless April morning and Cama Beach’s 15 miles of hiking trails beckoned. We chose the Cranberry Lake Trail, which took a little over an hour roundtrip. The trail was kid-friendly, wide enough for four people in some places and we only saw two other hikers during our trek. Along the way we crossed a trailhead that led to nearby Camano Island State Park.
Center for Wooden Boats
The Center for Wooden Boats operates a satellite facility at Cama Beach.
After our hike we wandered over to the Center for Wooden Boats (CWB), located smack in the center of the Cama Beach grounds.
CWB’s original location is on Seattle’s South Lake Union and the Camano Island satellite boathouse is central to Cama Beach’s history of recreational boating and fishing. “Center for Wooden Boats helps keep the original boathouse at Cama Beach open and active,” said Andrew Washburn, manager of CWB at Cama Beach. “We rent many of the boats that are replicas or restored that were originally used on Puget Sound.”
Both overnighters at Cama Beach as well as day visitors are welcome to rent sailboats, kayaks, rowboats, motorboats and even crab pots.
Cama Beach, said Washburn, is one of only two recreational boathouses still in operation out of more than 165 similar boathouses operating in Puget Sound from the late 1890s to the mid-1960s.
“That’s important to our maritime industry and culture because it was such a big part of our history and recreation here,” said Washburn.
As we left the boathouse and wandered back to our cabin to pack up, I couldn’t help but wonder about all the footprints that had been made on this same sand before me. I know I’ll return to make more.
Resources
Cama Beach State Park: www.parks.wa.gov/camabeach. (Note: Cabins can be rented year-round, however, the resort usually fills to capacity when school is out and a summer wait list for reservations can be up to nine months.)
Camano Island State Park: http://www.parks.wa.gov/parks/?selectedpark=Camano%20Island
Cama Beach: A Guide and a History by Gary Worthington:
http://www.garyworthington.com/index.htm
Cama Beach Foundation: http://www.camabeachfoundation.org/
Center for Wooden Boats: http://www.cwb.org/cwb-cama-beach/visit-cwb-cama
Island County Tourism: www.WhidbeyCamanoIslands.com
Carolyn Price is the publisher of Outdoors NW.
