Freeland Chamber of Commerce

Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, U.S.N, charted the first maps and related nautical charts of the south part of Whidbey Island in 1841 as Whidbys Island. Before this date the southern half of the island was generally considered untamed Indian country with an abundance of swamps, brambles and impassable undergrowth. Lt. Wilkes named a long well sheltered inlet on the east side of the island after one of his crew members; Doctor Silas Holmes. After sounding and charting Holmes Harbour, they proceeded around the island continuing their explorations.

Four years later the United States and England negotiated a treaty ceding what was known as The Oregon Territory to the U.S.; including a long narrow piece of land in the upper reaches of Puget Sound, known as Whidbys Island. In 1850 the U.S. government passed the Oregon Donation Land Act, giving homestead rights to interested citizens. Married couples could claim up to six hundred and forty acres and single people could acquire up to three hundred and twenty acres.

Isaac Ebey filed the first claim followed soon after by many others including Tom Coupe. The Ebey and Coupe names remain prominent on the island today. On November 20, 1853 a settler named Raphael Brunns filed on three hundred twenty acres on the shore opposite Holmes Harbour which was referenced as Mutiny Bay. Brunns traded his Mutiny Bay land for interest in properties in Coupeview and according to old court records ultimately lost everything, causing the land to revert to receivership to satisfy the debts he’d incurred.

Almost fifty years pass before records again show significant activity at the end of Holmes Harbour. In 1899 three Seattle visionaries (Henry L. Stevens, George Washington Daniels and Henry A. White) formed The Free Land Association for the purpose of establishing a utopian culture where their communal socialistic ideals could be promulgated. The Free Land Association platted a town made up of five-acre lots and on January 12, 1900 filed the incorporation papers for Freeland. This was nearly two decades ahead of the next incorporated town (Langley - 1918) on the south end of South Whidbey.

Perhaps the most ambitious and interesting proposal involving Freeland in the early days was the rail/canal proposal. A venture capital group known as The Pennsylvania Syndicate took option on nearly ten thousand acres between Holmes Harbour and Mutiny Bay. Their plan was to construct parallel train tracks and a sea level salt water canal allowing ships and barges to be towed either direction through the canal between Saratoga Passage and Admiralty Inlet. Today’s island curmudgeon’s, not too secretly, envision digging a similar moat on the north side of Greenbank, to deter the growing pollution of north-south auto, truck and bus traffic.

Freeland today accounts for much of the south central Whidbey Island commerce and tourism. A wide variety of businesses (shops, stores, inns and attractions) make it a growing commercial hub. Although there is no distinct ethnic population group as part of the Freeland area, there are an abundance of happy, well-adjusted people who live and work here; who also want their visitors and customers to feel wanted, needed and have the inclination to return.