Camano Island is in the beautiful Puget Sound waters in Washington off the Port of Everett and the city of Marysville. There are many wonderful and interesting facts that many people do not know about the island. Armed with some of these interesting tidbits, you may better understand the history of this beautiful forested island.
Starting at the northwest corner of Camano Island is a location called Rocky point. The Indians who first inhabited the island called Rocky point the “big bad place at the foot of something.” An area near Rocky point is where Thomas Clanney, the first European, settled on the island in 1855. Just a couple of miles south is also one of the most wonderful butter clam harvesting area.
Approximately 1/4 of the distance down the west side of the island is where the old Lummi Indians village was constructed. The Indians named an area on the beach “bushy head or tangled head.” Further down the beach southward, about one mile, there is an area near the beach that the Lummi Indians called “where something keeps continually falling.” When you arrive at these areas, you will understand how they got their names.
On May 31, 1792, the Vancouver survey party under Captain Whidbey sailed north in small boats. About four miles north of Camano Head, they discovered on a low projecting point of the western shore a village with numerous tribes. Whidbey’s team landed on the opposite shore, and they were met by upwards of 200 canoes with native families. There were many others walking along the shore accompanied by at least 40 dogs. Captain Whidbey remarked that everyone there was very friendly.
Saratoga Passage runs along the western shore of Camano Island. The Passage is named after a flagship under the master command of Thomas Macdonough from the Lake Champlain Flame in the war of 1812.
Near Lowell point on the west side of Elger Bay, named by the Indians as “scorched face or scorched cliff,” a captain of Forecastle named James Lowen surveyed the area in 1841 as a member of the Wilkes survey expedition.
Don Jucinto Caamano was a Spanish explorer who sailed the North Pacific, including Alaskan waters, and found a beautiful cove on the east side of Camano Island named Triangle Cove. The beach on the most northeastern area of the island was named by the Indians as “striped face,” which suggests the meaning could be translated “raccoon beach.”
On the northern top end of the island near Brown Point is another great butter clamming area. On the eastern shore of the bay, there is a community called Utsalady, which was known in the 1860s for its lumber and shipbuilding industries.
With these facts in hand, you now have better insight to help make your visit to the island much more interesting and enjoyable.