LA CONNER — It’s a peaceful place with a riotous history.
We begin in the late 1960s. Officials at Seattle City Light were predicting (inaccurately, it turned out) that the Northwest faced a looming electricity shortage. Their solution: Build nuclear power plants at some of the state’s prettiest places, including a forested knob on the northern shore of Skagit Bay called Kiket Island.
The nuke plant’s boosters, which included the Snohomish County PUD, bragged that it would make Skagit Bay swimmable, thanks to the immense quantity of hot water it would expel.
After furious protest by Skagit County residents, Seattle scuttled the plant idea in 1972, and sold the island a few years later.
More recently, Kiket, about 5 miles west of La Conner, factored in a notorious homicide case in which the body of the victim, a celebrity dog trainer who ran his business on the island, was never found.
Today, Kiket Island is the newest addition to Washington’s state park system, a largely untouched piece of the diverse, fragile marine ecosystem unique to the San Juan Islands.
And no interminable wait for a state ferry is needed to visit this island paradise.
The 84-acre island was purchased in 2010 for $14.3 million, and is jointly owned and managed by Washington State Parks and the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, whose reservation on Fidalgo Island includes Kiket.
After a lengthy planning process, Kiket finally opened to the public earlier this summer.
Kiket is part of Deception Pass State Park, but the island and nearby shoreline have been christened Kukutali Preserve. Kukutali means “place of the cattail mat,” referring to the temporary shelters of cattail mats used by tribal members when they gathered shellfish and netted salmon on the beach.
Technically an island, Kiket is connected to Fidalgo Island by a tombolo, a narrow spit of land built over the millennia by tidal currents, and is reachable by land. Visitors park in a small lot just off Snee-Oosh Road, where there also is an outhouse and a bike rack. A Discover Pass is required to park at the lot.
A gravel road to the island passes several private homes and a saltwater lagoon. Once on the island, the road continues across the island’s interior, while other trails branch off to the south and north before converging with the main trail at a large grassy area where a private home used to stand. There’s a lovely view west to the Deception Pass bridge here.
In all, there’s about 2 miles of easy walking suitable for all ages and abilities. You’ll wander through second-growth forest and past rocky meadows rimmed by madrona groves and massive big-leaf maples.
A short trail follows another tombolo at Kiket’s western point to Flagstaff Point, which is off-limits because of its sensitive ecosystem. The beach on the south side of the island is good for strolling, but visitors are asked to stay off the north side beach. Other restrictions: No dogs (even on leashes), no bicycles, no fires, no camping, no overnight parking, no shellfish gathering except by tribal members.
With the emphasis on preservation and the modest facilities, Kukutali isn’t the best choice for a large family reunion picnic. It is, however, a rare opportunity to experience Washington’s inland sea environment as it looked before development — and to reflect on how those qualities weren’t always understood, or even deemed worth caring about, by the folks in high places.
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