By Chris Friday, Director

Whatcom Creek--it is a place we think of now in terms of the June 10 pipeline explosion. We create in our minds powerful images of the mushroom cloud towering over the city, the tragedy of lost lives, the pointed debates over causes and responsibilities, and a sense of a pristine place despoiled. These images are real and are meaningful, but they do not tell us about the many human changes that have occurred around the creek over the decades. Knowing something about the geology, ecology, and history of Whatcom Creek help us comprehend this most recent event in a broad context and allow us to examine our own histories in this area a little more carefully.

Whatcom Creek is runs only a scant four miles from its beginnings at the northwest end of Lake Whatcom to where it empties into Bellingham Bay. The creek is a natural water outlet for the lake (created by the powerful glacier 5,700 feet or more high that covered the area during the Ice Age). Particularly in its upper stretches, Whatcom Creek cuts through the Chuckanut Sandstone formation that lies under Bellingham and extends from the foothills of Mt. Baker to Lummi Island. As it has in the years since its initial formation, the creek actively cuts through the sandstone. That erosion has created the deep gorge and spectacular waterfalls we enjoy so much today. In areas where the Chuckanut Sandstone was stronger, there was more resistance to erosion and this created the six waterfalls along the creek.

As it runs its course, the creek flows through several ecological zones. The upper creek exits Lake Whatcom near Bloedel-Donovan Park. There it moves along slowly and is similar to Lake Whatcom in its flora and fauna. In most of the Whatcom Falls Park area, the creek is swift flowing and cooler. The shady gorge and rocky banks along with the falls there create a special environment for certain plants and animals. As the creek enters the flat below the park, its flow slows and it warms again as it continues to wind its way to Bellingham Bay. Streams such as Fever Creek and Cemetery Creek add to its flow as it wends its way through thickets of various shrubs and blackberries between the Civic Field complex and Iowa Street. Taller cottonwoods create some shade and, at least in this century, only in the past two decades has this stretch of the stream been open for salmon spawning. As the creek nears Interstate 5, it enters a highly urban and industrialized area with significant changes in the surrounding environment effecting the nature of the creek. This segment of the creek bears the brunt of modern human impact, for every small oil or fuel spill from cars and trucks in the downtown area, every small leak of chemicals from the businesses along the creek invariably finds its way into storm sewers and into the creek. From City Hall to Bellingham Bay, the creek tumbles with great speed and force along a final stretch of harder sandstone and then into the estuary of mixed salt and fresh water. This is the site of the relatively new Maritime Heritage Park with its walking trails amid the native plants and trees. Annually, scores of salmon fishers gather along this last stretch near the sewage plant that was converted into a salmon hatchery to pull in a share of these spectacular fish.

This is the creek we think we know. We drive past it, hike along it, and play in it. But its history is much more complicated and revealing of how people have lived over the centuries here in Bellingham than we often allow ourselves to fathom.

Human impacts on the creek have been many. Native Americans, of course, utilized the creek and its drainage for many purposes. They lived seasonally near its mouth, traveled along its banks, and came to understand the place as "Whatcoom" or the "place of noisy (or rumbling) waters." This name captured the creek's most definitive features, the falls and rapids created by the relatively hard portions of Chuckanut Sandstone over which it flows. Where the sandstone was soft, the creek carved a gorge, where it was hard, falls developed. For centuries, Native Americans lived with the creek as part of their lives. While it was not a site of extensive settlement--it had no permanent winter village at its mouth--the ancestors of the Lummi Nation appear to have established seasonal fishing encampments near where the last of the falls tumbled into Bellingham Bay. There they harvested the fish congregating at the bottom of the falls. While at that spot the women and children spread out along the banks of the creek to gather berries and other fruits for the leaner months ahead.

The creek was also important as a landmark where three important transportation and communication routes met. By following the beach and bluff from Whatcom Creek to Squalicum Creek, people could pick up a trail leading north from the small settlement there to the larger Lummi village at The Portage--one of the largest and most important Lummi settlements on the Nooksack River. The two other trails connected to Saquantch and Nooksack areas inland and to the northeast as well as to the territories of the Neuk-wers of the Stick Samish (or Sia-mannas) inland and to the to the southeast. The trail heading to the northeast past Saquantch lands into the Nooksack territories led to a major Nooksack village known as Pop-a-ho-my (The Crossing) at an important ford across the river northwest of Sumas Mountain. The village stood at the crossroads of major trade routes stretching great distances in every direction and it remained an important site long after European American settlement in the area. The other trail leading to the southeast cut through the low pass where I-5 now runs, went along Lake Samish, and then turned toward today's Alger and up to an important seasonal village known as Kaw-tche-a-ha-meek at the southeast end of Lake Whatcom. There, people from different tribes gathered to collect berries, hazelnuts, wild carrots and onions, all of which were important sources of food for them. This site, though remote, was productive enough that later European American settlers established the tiny community of Park near that ancient gathering spot.

When they used its waters or banks as sources of food, as a means to carry away waste from their fishing encampment, or even as a landmark Native Peoples had an impact on the creek and its environs--no human presence is without consequences. But a limited population and extensive, rather than intensive, use patterns meant that the flora and fauna of the creek and the manner in which the creek flowed, remained relatively unaffected by the presence of Native American.

Like Native Americans, the first European American settlers liked the sounds of rushing waters. For them, that sound meant a path to progress. Falling water turned the wheels of industry and in 1852 and 1853 Henry Roeder and his partner J.E. Peabody built a mill near the present site of the Prospect Street Bridge. Flumes diverted water to the millpond, water powered the mill, and trees, once so thick that all but the beach was nearly impassible by foot, quickly disappeared from the banks of the stream. Roeder and Peabody had traveled to California in hopes of making their fortunes in the gold fields and when fire destroyed much of San Francisco in the early 1850s, they set out north looking for rich sources of timber to sell in the city. At each of several stops on their northward trek they found others had beaten them to prime spots. Finally, in Bellingham Bay, they found a place enough off the beaten path of European Americans that they were able to lay first claim to a prime mill site.

Just what Native Americans thought of the impact on this place is unclear. Later accounts hold that Roeder and Peabody traveled to the large Lummi village at The Portage. There, according to early local chronicler Lottie Roeder Roth, "Chief Chowitzit not only gave them the Falls and the land surrounding it, but promised to send some of his men to help raise the mill." While Chowitzit (sometimes spelled Chowitsut) was a major figure among the Lummi, especially at The Portage village, it is not clear that he really had any authority to cede the rights to use Lummi lands. Etiquette and oratory conventions may have impelled Chowitzit to offer up the lands. His motives may also have been less than sincere. We know that only two years later one particular Lummi designated by federal officials as a "chief"--a designation that emerged among the Lummi only after the influence of the fur trade and missionaries--signed away Nooksack territories in the Treaty of Point Elliot while protecting Lummi lands. European Americans willingly and unquestioningly accepted his authority to do so because it served their interests as well.

If Chowitzit actually had any authority to make such a grant and indeed gave permission for Roeder and Peabody to build the mill along the creek, his rationale for doing so remains unknown. He may have hoped that the establishment of European American activities in Lummi territory might give him access to trade goods and resources then only available through trade with British at Fort Langley to the north. He could have been calculating, too, the value that Roeder and Peabody offered as allies against Indians from the northern coastal stretches of British Columbia who periodically raided Coast Salish villages and encampments, including those of the Lummi. Perhaps he simply determined that the Noisy Waters site was unproductive enough to grant to these outsiders. No matter what his reasons, Roeder's descendants and most historians of the area have used this story to justify and legitimize their claims to the site and by association to the rest of Bellingham Bay. After all, they imply, Chowitzit did give away the mill site and the surrounding lands.

The reality was much messier. After what was an initial period of good will and assistance, Lummi men could not be convinced to work for Roeder and Peabody in the mill. Either they resented their treatment or they simply had better things to do than to toil away in the little mill when they should be participating in the work and rituals of the various seasons. Later chroniclers charged Lummis with being "lazy" but a better explanation is that they had their own work to do. Roeder and Peabody struggled to staff their plant and hired "Northern Indians" from the northern stretches of Vancouver Island and the mainland with whom the Lummi had longstanding animosities for these northerners had a history of regular raids on villages in this area. The situation got so bad that some Lummi raided the mill site killing several of the "Northern Indians" in a retaliatory raid. Within just a few short years, what good will may have existed between Roeder and Peabody and the Lummis had dissipated.

Roeder and Peabody did not have much better luck selling their lumber. They faced many delays in getting the lumber cut. They had to buy the iron parts for the mill in San Francisco at 25 cents a pound. During the first summer of operations, the weather turned hot and dry, leaving too little water in the creek to run the mill. In the meantime, other lumbermen had captured the post-fire San Francisco market and prices dropped from $1,000 to $20 per thousand board feet. Roeder and Peabody were left to hawk their planks in Victoria, at prices much lower than they had hoped for in San Francisco.

The 1856 establishment of Fort Bellingham near Whatcom Creek gave some temporary stability to the enterprise. The U.S. sent George Pickett (later to gain fame fighting for the Confederacy during the Civil War) to Bellingham to build a fort during the hysteria of 1855-1856. At this time, whites in Washington Territory feared that the separate discontents of Native Americans on Puget Sound and the Plateau might erupt and join together in a massive war of resistance. Scattered resistance did emerge, but no warfare on a grand scale. In the meantime, Pickett's men constructed a fort and built a bridge across the creek.

A brief gold rush along the Fraser River in 1858 brought as many as 10,000 people to Bellingham Bay and most camped along the beach and up the bluff from the Roeder Peabody mill at Whatcom Creek. From there they hiked inland, following that same Native American path to The Crossing on the Nooksack River and from there to the Fraser River gold fields. This spot, eventually known as Nooksack Crossing shortly thereafter became one of the earliest sites of European American settlement along the river. At first, many miners used the trail from Whatcom Creek up to The Crossing. Lummis apparently jumped at the chance to profit from these hungry miners, selling them dried fish by the ton and virtually any canoe that would float. When Governor James Douglas of British Columbia ruled that all miners must obtain licenses in Victoria and that all ships must clear customs there before entering into Canada, most prospective miners as well as those who hoped to profit from them went to Victoria, not Bellingham Bay. Lummis returned to their pattern of fishing and gathering at the mouth of the creek while Roeder, Peabody, and other new arrivals struggled along with their small mills and low grade

After this brief flurry of activity in the 1850s, European American settlement and development of the Bellingham Bay area proceeded very slowly. When the Roeder Peabody mill burned in 1873, there was no immediate move to reconstruct it. Only in the 1880s and 1890s, did a new surge of development emerge that far surpassed that of the 1850s and which would have a tremendous impact on the creek and surrounding environs. In those decades, the excitement of possible railroad connections, the discovery of a useable, but low-grade coal in the area, and the resumption of logging on a much larger scale, especially along Lake Whatcom put great strains on the creek. Roeder sold his mill site and some of the lands of his original claim to the Washington Colony. This group from Kansas, like many others who came to the Puget Sound, sought to establish financially sound utopian colonies upon the rich resources of the area. While the colony did build the Colony Mill and a mile-long wharf out to deep water in Bellingham Bay during 1882 and 1883, its organizers proved unable to recruit enough families to resettle from Kansas. The Colony Mill remained important, though, and it marked the first of the new industrial enterprises that sprouted up in the area. Its placement along Whatcom Creek signified that the stream would bear the brunt of many more enterprises over the decades that followed.

In 1883, Roeder gave 4.5 acres of undeveloped land (now a part of Maritime Heritage Park) to the city of Whatcom. While that land was to have been used as a park, it quickly became the garbage dump for the community. Residents simply tossed unwanted items, channeled sewers toward the creek, and turned their backs on Noisy Waters. From time to time, boys and men joined together to voluntarily hack back the advancing blackberries and other shrubs to clear small portions of the land for baseball games. In 1901, the Ladies Cooperative Society preempted the men's claims to the baseball field and raised enough funds to build a bandstand, later convincing the city to plant trees, shrubs, and grass.

While the baseball diamond and later the bandstand tamed a small portion of the lands near Whatcom Creek, the remainder continued as the community's dumping grounds. Lummi fishers continued to camp along the beach to take fish, but the runs steadily diminished over the years. Debris and refuse piled up at every turn of the creek and each obstruction in the waterway caught more. By 1906, the relatively new city of Bellingham, formed out of the merger of the several smaller cities that had grown together, ran a sewer line across the stream blocking salmon from their spawning grounds between today's I-5 and Alabama Hill.

Upstream, the story was little better. At the outlet of Lake Whatcom that fed the creek, two decades of lumber mills dumping sawdust into the lake created a huge mudsill. This gradually raised the level of the lake and altered the ecosystem of the stream. Still, the city below suffered from annual floods and its dams, constructed to stem the flow, regularly failed. In 1906, the city built a more permanent dam in an attempt to keep the flow of water through the creek at a constant. In the meantime, it had also begun to pipe water from the stream for the city water system. In a moment full of irony the city issued no-swimming warnings for Lake Whatcom in 1906 in order to protect the purity of the city's water but it issued no orders against the mills or mines along the lake. When the White City Amusement Park opened at Silver Beach in 1907, for the next decade that it remained in operation, its wastes ran down the slope, into Lake Whatcom, and then down Whatcom Creek to Bellingham Bay. Scarcely anything of importance happened in or near Bellingham that did not drain into the much-burdened Whatcom Creek.

For half a century from the first arrival of permanent European American settlers through the heady rush to industrialize Bellingham and the Lake Whatcom areas in the 1890s and 1900s, the waste and by-products invariably ran into Whatcom Creek. That the creek survived at all is simply amazing.

Whatcom Creek did not go unnoticed by all. In 1907, questions began to emerge about the deleterious effects of the sewage from Garden and High streets that "pours" into the creek. Some Bellingham residents proposed turning the Whatcom Creek estuary into a "lakelet" for boating "pleasure" while others urged the city to turn the area into a park. "For a place to rest" just a five minute walk from downtown, one man wrote in the newspaper, "the site will be ideal. Even in its rugged wilderness it is so attractive that many people are wont to stray along the banks of the creek, where the clear water runs so rapidly and murmurs so merrily." This yearning for a restful place full of nature's bounty was very much part of a broader mindset in which people living in an urban, industrial age longed for "country" living. At least in 1907, some believed that the attempt to clean up the creek was a sign that "the city each year is becoming more cosmopolitan." The creation of city parks became a means to have a bit of the country right inside the city. There, people could escape the problems of the modern world, refresh themselves in "nature," and then return back to industrial life. Reformers believed that all classes, from the worker and the industrial operator to the clerk and manager benefited from these momentary escapes into the "primitive." In Bellingham, the calls to transform the area where Whatcom Creek tumbled through the refuse as it emptied into Bellingham Bay would have to wait another six decades. At the other end of the creek, though, the reformers made much more progress.

In 1908, led by the Young Men's Commercial Club under Arthur Watts, used "popular subscriptions" to raise funds to purchase a tract of about forty acres from the E.B. Young Estate for $12,000, about half the value of the land, in order to establish a park. The previous owners of the land had already removed the largest trees, but "many evergreens and shrubs" remained or had grown back by the time of the YMCC purchase. Cut-rate sales of logged-off lands were common as timber companies and other landholders sought to rid themselves of the tax burdens that accompanied these "unproductive" lands. Indeed, what we know today as Sehome Arboretum and Western's campus passed into public ownership in this same fashion.

Even with these "cheap" lands available, city governments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries seldom allocated significant funds for the purchase and especially the development and maintenance of parks, leaving the tasks to the philanthropy and volunteerism of prominent citizens. Such was the case for Bellingham, too. In 1903, when Bellingham consolidation occurred, the new city charter contained provisions for a parks department of sorts but what limited funding was available shrank dramatically in the next five years. At that time, the city's parks included only the unimproved Elizabeth Park and the Bay View Cemetery. Fortunately for Bellingham, at least some of the money raised by the city's industrialists went toward the establishment of places like Whatcom Falls Park. In the next several years, the YMCC built trails and a playground. The YMCC club members, all from the city's elite families, used their connections to garner donations for their efforts.

Beginning in 1911, the city used tax revenue and special levies to buy Whatcom Falls Park from the YMCC but in that year only managed to raise about a quarter of the sum necessary. By 1914, the city had paid about half the balance, assuming full title to the lands several years later. Still, funds to develop and maintain the park were not within the city's means. Accordingly in 1911, a group of women in the city followed the lead of the Ladies Cooperative Society that had earlier established Elizabeth Park and formed the Whatcom Falls Park Club. For the next two decades, they arranged for the construction of wooden bridges and picnic shelters throughout the park and oversaw the planting of many flowers and shrubs. By 1917, the Club managed to convince William J. Hannegan to sell at a reduced price a portion of land along Electric Avenue to the park. This connected the park to the streetcar line, opening it up to many more users than in previous years. During the 1920s, privately funded park improvements were a regular feature.

Lottie Roeder Roth's characterization of the park in 1926 captured the tenor of the times. "All the primitive, natural wildwood and native features," she noted of Whatcom Falls Park, "have been retained unmarred, except by convenient trails." Like her counterpart in 1907 who wanted the "rugged wilderness" of the lower stretches of Whatcom Creek to be available for a respite from the workaday life of downtown Bellingham, Roth yearned for the "primitive, natural" atmosphere of Whatcom Falls Park. But what she neglected to recognize was that this was a manicured and transplanted "wilderness" heavily influenced by the YMCC, the Whatcom Falls Club, and all the industries upstream.

During the Depression years, raising funds for park improvements and even maintenance proved difficult, but federal money flowed into the park. During the 1930s, the city finally purchased most of the remainder of the park and brought it into the city park system. In 1936, the city used federal funds along with help from the State Game Commission and the Whatcom County Sportsmen's Association, to build the fish hatchery. Then in 1939, workers paid by New Deal Work's Progress Administration money moved the sandstone arches from the burned-out Pike Building downtown up to the park and constructed the stone bridge across the creek that is such a landmark today. As in the decades before, Bellingham residents continued to think of the park as a "natural" place in spite of these many transformations.

After the bust of the Depression and then the boom of World War II, dark clouds appeared on the horizon around Bellingham in the 1950s and 1960s. Already there were indications of the imminent demise of the fishing and timber industry in the area. Even then, while people used Whatcom Falls Park and much of the rest of the creek for recreation, they spent little time worrying about its health. In 1947, the city built a sewage treatment plant on filled in land next to the estuary where Whatcom Creek emptied into the Bay. While this prevented the pumping of raw sewage into the creek, the surrounding area continued to serve as a dump. In 1960, the city expanded the facility, but again made no extensive effort to control the amount of refuse pushed into the creek's drainage. Ironically, the situation reversed at the other end of the creek. By the end of the war, most of the major mills had closed on Lake Whatcom and in 1946, Mina and J.H. Bloedel gave what became Bloedel-Donovan Park to the city.

By the 1960s, though, Bellingham had moved far enough away from its dependence on extractive enterprises such as the lumber mills, fish canneries, and coal mines to consider other uses for its lands. Indeed, it had to if it hoped to rebuild its economy. The mid-1960s completion of Interstate 5 and the completion of the pipeline through town held the potential for new money from increased tourism, retail sales, light industry, and commercial development. City boosters also hoped for a corresponding population growth in the area. In many respects, these developments have come to fruition and mark the "new" Bellingham from the "old."

In their attempts to make the city more attractive, city officials approved work on the Civic Field sports complex, which had come to the city through a series of land donations in 1926, 1944-45, and 1955. Recreational facilities such as these were part and parcel of what modern cities offered residents, but while this attention to healthy recreation was laudable, it remade lands that drained into the creek. This latest use combined with the expansion of light industry and commercial activities and the increasingly dense residential settlement patterns east of I-5 to put new stresses on Whatcom Creek. What had been largely a rural stretch of the creek became suburban and urban.

During the 1960s, though, some city officials and residents began to look at the creek with new visions. Some began to recognize that the creek was "the birthplace of Bellingham" but were frustrated that since the turn of the century the city had "turned its back on the Creek." One city report from the decade reminded readers that Whatcom Creek was "Nature's greatest gift to downtown" and that it was "a refreshing and sure source of plant and fish life and a mecca for visitors and citizens alike." Echoing strains of their Progressive Era counterparts from the 1910s, these new reformers hoped to transform the mouth of Whatcom Creek into a "natural" and yet still commercial site.

While ideas floated about, action did not begin until the 1970s. In 1972, Bellingham City Planner Eunice Wolf warned: "Many businesses in the area are either closing or looking elsewhere." Wolf and others inside as well as outside city government looked to the improvement of lower Whatcom Creek as a solution. City officials hoped that the city might be able to capitalize on the 1976 United States Bicentennial celebrations to obtain funding to undertake the project. Their vision reflected the times. Wolf, for example, publicly explained that she hoped "to ring the park with stores, offices, town houses, open spaces, all sorts of things."

As it had in the 1930s, federal money flowed into Whatcom Creek as the city used the old sewage treatment plant, which closed in 1974, to serve as a fish hatchery and the cornerstone for the new Maritime Heritage Park. City officials hoped that the park would "draw a few clean dollars" and improve the downtown area that they characterized as "difficult to enjoy." By 1979, the city released the first salmon from the facility and had begun to restore the banks of lower Whatcom Creek. Community groups helped clean up the stream and some even raised funds for the construction of a fish ladder that allowed salmon to pass over the sewer line that had blocked their progress since 1906. This transformed the middle section of Whatcom Creek and its tributaries, Fever and Cemetery creeks, into potential salmon-spawning streams.

The drama of these changes inspired local observers. In 1979, staff writer for the Bellingham Herald Joan Connell wrote: "For years, humans have been the takers and the little estuary where Whatcom Creek meets Bellingham Bay has given itself up to their notions of progress. But the tide has turned at Whatcom Creek: The humans have begun to give back." Dreams of commercial activity side by side with spawning salmon and unbounded optimism quickly gave way to the stark realities of the situation. Once the city and its residents committed to using Whatcom Creek as a site for recreation and salmon enhancement, matters that had not seemed critical in earlier years became near emergencies. Even the diesel and other fuel spills of several gallons from city streets or the smallest leaks of chemicals from industrial facilities killed hundreds, even thousands of immature salmon in the spawning facility at the mouth of the creek. Throughout the 1980s, this was a chronic and worrisome problem.

Matters only got worse when city workers tried to widen and deepen Whatcom Creek along Iowa Street for flood control purposes. The creek annually flooded in the area, sometimes causing toxic chemicals to leak into the stream. But the city only belatedly realized that digging up the creek did little to assist salmon. Letters and articles began appearing in the newspaper arguing that Whatcom Creek "was not destined by nature to be a major salmon-rearing stream," but rather it's "heritage is industrial and commercial." Flood control for the good of commerce, these voices argued, and not salmon needed to be the city's focus. Then, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, city plans to use Fever Creek and Cemetery Creek for spawning grounds ran up against competition from plans for commercial development in Haskell Business Park. Both projects dated from 1976, so neither could claim to have been first on the scene. In 1980, engineer for the proposed business park Jim Wilson noted that in the past, "streams were something to get out of the way…, but now people are excited about the possibility of fish runs. I'm excited about it. We'll do what's necessary within reason" to compensate for them. A long debate ensued about how to handle parking lot run-off, the amount of dredging and diking that could take place for flood control, and the necessary width of buffer zones along the creek. Each side presented its data, claiming its evaluation was the more accurate than the opposition. The city deliberated and compromised between the two. The compromise did not satisfy those wanting protection for salmon or those hoping for slight limits on commercial developments, but the business park was built and salmon continued to run in the stream.

However much we may attempt to convince ourselves that Whatcom Creek is a slice of wilderness in our own backyards, its history reveals that it long ago passed from a state where humans had a limited impact on its flora, fauna, and even flow. Since Roeder and Peabody established the mill, since city residents used the lower creek as a refuse dump, since various enterprises and housing developments dumped their wastes (even if indirectly) into Lake Whatcom, and even since the men's and women's clubs established and shepherded places like Whatcom Falls Park into the city's fledgling park system, Whatcom Creek has been an urban stream. With that status, it carries a record of how we have approached living in this region. Our reactions to the recent catastrophe are linked to the tragic loss of young lives and to a sense of nature's beauty destroyed, but we must also recognize that some of the horror is the realization that we have not escaped the confines of the lives we live. Clean waters and verdant stream banks which we so desire for relaxation and recreation as well as healthy fish runs that we now perceive as a symbol of the era's progress exist in a delicate balance with economic and population growth. Whatcom Creek will continue to flow for some time. How it does so will reflect how we humans next to it chose to see it for our actions today are the history of tomorrow.