The Whidby Island Land Boom
A remote island community sees land values double in four months as entrepreneurs push for a new industrial future.
The Republican candidates from the various precincts of Island county met in convention last Saturday and nominated Captain J. Morse, of Oak Harbor for representative, and J. B. Libby, of Coupeville, for county clerk. The Whidby Island Mill Company has a top saw and will start their sawmill running shortly. It has been a matter of much inconvenience to the residents of the island on account of its continued idleness, thereby necessitating their sending to foreign mills for their building materials. Captain Brown, who recently bought 800 acres of land across the bay, sold sixty acres this week on the water front for $100 an acre for land for which he paid $50 an acre only four months ago. This land is adjoining the new town of San de Fuca, and is only the beginning of real estate transactions in the region, that bids fair in the future to rival that of our neighbors, Port Townsend, or even that of Seattle. Negotiations are being now made for a sawmill, to be located at the new town.
“Captain Brown, who recently bought 800 acres of land across the bay, sold sixty acres this week on the water front for $100 an acre for land for which he paid $50 an acre only four months ago.”
The late 19th-century 'boom' fever seen on Whidby Island mirrors modern speculative real estate pressures in the Puget Sound region. Today's residents continue to grapple with the tension between island development and the desire to maintain rural, local access to basic infrastructure.
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