Deception Pass, day 5, Pass Island

October, 2017

Pass Island or … stuck in the middle with you.

“Whidbey to the left of me … Fidalgo to the right … here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”

Here’s a good question … what’s the name of the band that made that song famous (Stuck in the Middle with You)?  What country was the band from?  And what year was it a hit?  What’s your best answer to those questions, without using any reference material (print nor online nor your 1970s record collection)?

Pass Island is pretty much stuck in the middle between Whidbey Island to the south and Fidalgo Island to the north.  Pass Island is what plugs up Deception Pass and causes all that turmoil, all that roiling and broiling, all that terrible tempestuousness of water.

The history of the construction of the two bridges is most interesting.

But to start with, BEFORE the bridges were built, the method by which people got from Fidalgo to Whidbey was by going to a specific location in a cove on Fidalgo Island and using a large mallet to bang on a great big saw blade that was hanging in a tree.  That would alert the captain of the ferry over on Whidbey to start up the boat and come get them.

You sometimes had to wait awhile, if the owner/captain of the ferry was eating lunch or busy with a household chore or yardwork or was doing some maintenance work on the boat, but eventually she would warm up the engine on the small ferry, the MF Acorn, and chug over to get you.  “MF” stands for “motor ferry” by the way.  Fare was 50 cents each way for a car and driver.

The MF Acorn in the foreground.

Captain Berte Olson

Construction of the northern, smaller bridge (below) between Fidalgo and Pass Island began in August, 1934.  Both bridges (from Fidalgo to Pass, and then from Pass to Whidbey) were completed by July, 1935.  (The worldwide Great Depression was generally from 1929 to 1939.)

The Deception Pass bridges were a Public Works Administration project.  They were built by workers in the Civilian Conservation Corps and by local out-of-work farmers.  First they built a narrow, wooden railway bridge from Fidalgo to Pass Island, then from Pass to Whidbey.  The railway carried building material … concrete, steel, wood timbers, trucks and tools, etc.  Then they built the two steel bridges.

The cost of construction was $482,000.  (It costs more than that just to paint the bridges today.)  Total length of both bridges is 1487 feet, more than a quarter mile.  The height from water to roadway is about 180 feet, depending on the tide.

You would not catch me backing MY truck out onto a contraption like that in the photo above, 180 feet above the water!

In the end, the Deception Pass Bridge allowed the US Navy to construct the Naval Air Station on Whidbey Island which, in turn, was a major influence on the economic development of the northern half of Whidbey Island.  But the bridge also meant that Captain Berte Olson was out of a job.  🙁

Ok, history lesson is over … let’s go see this place today!

Pass Island was exactly where I went on the morning of my fifth day here.  It was Monday morning, so perfect timing to visit one of the usually packed weekend tourist spots.

Above … looking north to Fidalgo Island from Pass Island with the big white truck over on the right in the small parking lot on the top of Pass Island.

Above … the view south to Whidbey Island from the edge of that parking lot on Pass Island.  That is one long bridge!  It is particularly long if you are walking it and not just because of the distance.  I started walking on the sidewalk along the bridge and didn’t get even ten feet when I noticed how much the bridge was bouncing and trembling every time even a small car drove by.  I turned around and scurried back to the stability of Pass Island.

I guess in all the years I’d lived on Whidbey, I had never walked on this bridge before today.  You can bet I won’t be walking on it again any time soon!

Back to safety on Pass Island, the photo above was the view as I leaned over the railing on the edge of the bridge.  There’s part of Pass Island below and then further down, 180 feet straight down, is that tumultuous, writhing water.  In the photo above, look at the bottom edge of the photo and notice the wood planked “thing” in the right corner of the photo.

This is a photo (above) of that same “thing”, although at a different spot along the bridge.  It appeared to run the length of both bridges and I suppose it is a conduit that carries wiring and such.  But the conduit was bare everywhere else along the bridge except where it crossed Pass Island.  Here on Pass Island it was wrapped with wooden planks held on by metal straps.  Why?  In the photo below, you can see the pipe/conduit running along the bridge from Pass to Whidbey, with no wooden planks or metal straps.  Hmmmm.

A stairway led from the parking lot down to a lower part of Pass Island where you can get a good look at the construction of the bridge, and get a closer look at the water below.  You can get quite close to the edge of Pass Island right along the main channel of Deception Pass.

The current was now inbound, east bound, and was not quite at its peak in this photo and in the video below.  The concrete stanchion across the way (on Whidbey) is about 38 feet wide at the base.  Watch the video below and think about what that current would do with a 38-foot boat.  Also notice the 4-5 foot overfall that starts on the right side of that rock that’s in front of the large stanchion.  Even the professional, commercial captains wait for slack current before heading through Deception Pass.

 

Above, the view east from atop Pass Island to tiny Strawberry Island (center of the photo) and to Ben Ure Island (right side of photo).  LOTS more history there … Ben smuggled Chinese people into the US in the 1880s by hiding them on Pass Island (before the bridges were built) to avoid the Revenue Service.

A couple of classic Madrona (arbutus menziesii) photos.

 

Walking around to the north side of Pass Island, you can look across narrow Canoe Pass to the cliffs of Fidalgo Island.  The cliff in the photo above is about 210 feet high.

 

That was quite a full morning!  Again, I didn’t realize I would see so much or learn so much, or get to chat with two sets of really nice folks in that little parking lot.  One set of folks was a couple, both of whom had been born and raised near the small town of Coupeville on Whidbey Island.  Since there weren’t many people living on the island all those years ago, we thought we might know each other, but we didn’t.  The other set of folks was a couple who were here visiting from Moorhead, Minnesota, which is right smack dab next to Fargo, North Dakota, where I had lived for a year or so when I was 4 years old.  What a small world!

And then the big white truck took me back to my campsite for a bite of lunch and, truth-be-told, a wee nap. 🙂