Washington State ferries have ensorcelled me since I was a child.
If I spy a postcard display featuring a photo of one of the boats, I smell creosote and clam chowder; hear gulls and rainfall; see mountains and deadheads; feel the twisting machinery below delivering arcane impulses to the soles of my feet, my imagination afire with reminiscences of sunsets and sunrises illuminating the promenade, long waits on summer holidays, and blasts of winter air racing along the deck trying to snatch the watch cap from my head. All as if I were somehow in my schoolboy home wrapped in a quilt with my toes thrust near the ingle while enjoying a warm cookie.
The fleet is the largest in the United States and the second‐largest vehicular ferry system in the world. Underway, the flags straining at the halyard to not be carried off by the apparent wind offer a vivid demonstration that the majestic boats are rushing through the water despite their bulk. Seen from a distance at night, the lighted vessels appear as a species of phenomenon defying proper explanation, as if prodigies were visiting the waves, soon to be lost in the clutter of city lights or occluded by a natural obstacle, disinterested in the language of science.
An occasion affording time to spend the night ashore next to the Mukilteo ferry pier last weekend had me as excited as I may well have been when I was eight years old had I been presented then with the same opportunity. My wife and I packed our bags and sallied forth.
Mukilteo (Lushootseed Bək'wəttiwʔ [narrow passage] or [goose neck]) was a year‐round village for the Snohomish people, whose presence dates to at least 1,000 years ago. George Vancouver dropped anchor offshore late in the day on May 29, 1792, and gave the area the name Rose Point, which was later changed on American charts to Point Elliott.
On January 22, 1855, the territorial governor met at Point Elliott with 82 Native American leaders (including Si'ahl, i.e., Seattle) to sign a treaty whereby the indigenous people ceded their lands to the United States government in exchange for relocation to reservations¹
and a peck of bullshit. The postmaster of the first post office in the town (1862) revised the name from Point Elliott to the name given by its original inhabitants.²
Today, Mukilteo is home to the Mukilteo Light, a lighthouse that became operational in 1906 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. The original Fresnel lens was replaced in 1927 with a fixed Fresnel lens, which is still in use.
Natural Philosophy for General Readers and Young Persons,D. Appleton
The lighthouse is enclosed within a lovely city park. We took advantage of the hour to climb the stairs to the light and take a look around, noting that the predominant features of the landscape are Possession Sound and Whidbey, Gedney, and Camano Islands, which the lighthouse faces and upon which its light shines once every five seconds.
A Coast Salish village named WHESH‐ud (splashing water) on Camano Island at the shore of Camano Head was destroyed in the early nineteenth century when a large portion of the Head slid into Possession Sound.
A tsunami caused by the slide drowned many on Gedney Island. After that, the Coast Salish groups used the site at WHESH‐ud only for seasonal clamming.³
We gratefully confronted no such catastrophes as we tucked into dinner at
Arnies, two blocks up the hill from the lighthouse.
Our room for the night was within 100 yards of the ferry dock, overlooking the dock and the boats as they departed.
The state is planning to replace the dock with a new facility directly to the east, removing from view one of the greatest attractions any hotel could have, and we were happy to be able to enjoy that view before it is disturbed.
The weather was overcast with a bit of mist in the air, so could not have been better for a pair of mossbacks gripped by nostalgia, and I stood transfixed at the window as if I were watching a rabbit hide colored hen’s eggs.
In the morning, a group of divers appeared at the T‐dock below our window, disappearing together beneath the surface as we watched. At a depth of 50 feet bearing 330° from the dock is a large PVC‐pipe geodome structure
built to attract creatures inhabiting the water,
helping make the dock one of the most popular sites for diving in this part of the state.
We were content to sip coffee and observe from indoors, the sleep of an undisturbed night having loosed us hale upon the day.
Attention to the divers paid, we watched as M/V Issaquah docked and its cargo of people, bikes, trucks, motorcycles, and cars disembarked; talking as we packed our belongings into our Cadillac about the helpings of Ivar’s fish and chips eaten during a lifetime of joining those waiting for the ferry to arrive. Nearly three score years after the Century 21 Exposition, Seattle is no longer an unabashed locus of provincial characters, but for decades perhaps foremost among them was Ivar Haglund. For those of us who remember it, his homespun persona is inextricably linked with the waterfront experience throughout the region, Mukilteo being no exception.
Remnants of the wheelhouse of the scrapped state ferry Kalakala
are stored outdoors adjacent to the corporation yard in the city where, in 1935, its superstructure was built atop the hull of the burned‐out ferry Peralta from California.⁴ We walk past those derelict pieces often and recall that author Steven Pickens observed that the streamlined vessel had once been the second‐most photographed object in the world after the Eiffel Tower in Paris.⁵
I have distant and perhaps false memories of traveling aboard the Kalakala as a child — my family unquestionably patronized the state ferry system while the Kalakala was still in the fleet — but true or otherwise, the ruins of the boat augment the story of the Washington ferries,
indelibly of the place I claim as home, my narrative bound to its legends. I look at such things and remember no less than I remember my grandmother’s kitchen.
It was a fine morning in Mukilteo. We eased away from the curb and struck out for home.