“Reflecting on my Cultus Bay days I have come to the conclusion that it was probably the most productive area on the south end.
We had all kinds of clams: butter, steamers, horse and geoducks when the tide was out.
One of the best salmon fisheries was off Possession Point. Schools of salmon would come into the Bay on an incoming tide.
We could pick up crabs at low tides… We never lacked for plenty of seafood. Just had to make the effort to go get it.”
––Dick Bryant
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The above quote is part of a larger reminiscence article about growing up at Cultus Bay in the 1930s and 1940s written by 86-year-old Dick Bryant. It is in the next SWHS Now & Then Newsletter which is currently being printed.
The cover story is about steamboat Captain Henry Bailey, son of South Whidbey’s first white settler, Robert Bailey, and his wife Yabo-Litza, daughter of Snohomish Tribe sub-chief S’Sleht-Soot (English name of Peter). Bailey settled at Cultus Bay adjacent to the permanent Snohomish Village of D’GWAD’wk (pronounced Digwadsh).
Henry Bailey became one of the best known and respected steamboat captains not only on Puget Sound, but also the Yukon River during the Klondike gold rush.
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