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◌  Washington shoreline photos

6 March 2012


The Washington State Department of Ecology Coastal Atlas has photos of most of Washington’s coast. These are really useful if you’re tracking things like development, erosion, or kelp growth. But it’s also a lot of fun for casual browsing. I recommend the images from the 70s, which are huge (click view larger). Here are a few that I’ve shrunk and color-balanced a little to account for haze and film degradation, linked to the originals:

The port of Tacoma.

My family lived in the large farmhouse in the field on the beach at the right edge in about 1989–93.

See the yellow patches? Those are stands of scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius), an invasive shrub. Mom and Dad had a small garlic field to the upper left of the patch on the left. I spent a lot of time (as perceived by a small child) on that beach.

Some are most interesting to me just for their esthetics. This is a patch of beach near Seaview.

The dendritic estuary at the mouth of the Skagit near Stanwood.