Qualla: Padilla Bay

Padilla Bay: Introduction

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joe Mabel (on Flickr as Joe Mabel from Seattle, US), CC BY-SA 3.0. Juan Vicente de Guemes Padilla Horcasitas never came anywhere near Washington state. He was the viceroy of New Spain, governing from Mexico City, and in 1791 the naval officer Jose Maria Narvaez was exploring these waters in his name. Narvaez did what explorers did: he flattered his superior onto the chart. The bay became Seno Padillo. The island and the channel just west of it took the other half of the same man's name and became Guemes. Two centuries on, the bay, the island, and the channel are still carrying pieces of one absent bureaucrat, and almost nobody using them has any idea they are related.

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Image: Joe Mabel (on Flickr as Joe Mabel from Seattle, US) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Padilla Bay: A Bay That Leaves Twice a Day

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit This image was taken by me and is released for public use., Public domain. Padilla Bay lies between the mainland and the San Juan Islands, with Fidalgo and Guemes islands shielding it to the west, Samish Island to the north, and Guemes Channel connecting it out to Rosario Strait. Calling it a bay slightly overstates the case. At high tide it is water; a...

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Image: This image was taken by me and is released for public use. | Public domain

Padilla Bay: The Farmed Edge

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 4.0. Where a delta makes flat, fertile, extremely wet ground, people build dikes. Part of Padilla Bay's tidal flats were walled off and drained into farmland, which is how the Skagit Valley became one of the most productive agricultural districts on the Pacific coast -- tulip fields, ...

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Image: Joe Mabel | CC BY-SA 4.0

Padilla Bay: A Reserve Instead of a Port

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Benjamin Cody, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1980 Padilla Bay was incorporated into the National Estuarine Research Reserve system, which set aside roughly 8,000 acres of estuary -- more than 11,000 including the upland habitat behind it -- as a place to be studied rather than developed. The Washington Department of Ecol...

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Image: Benjamin Cody | CC BY-SA 3.0

Padilla Bay: Learning the Mud

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Walter Siegmund (talk), CC BY 2.5. The Breazeale Interpretive Center is the public face of all this, about six miles from Anacortes in the Skagit Valley. It is the rare science facility built for children as much as researchers: exhibits on estuary ecology, fish tanks, a hands-on room, a video theatre, classrooms,...

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Image: Walter Siegmund (talk) | CC BY 2.5