It is widely held to be the site of the first European landing in what would become Washington state, during Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra's expedition in 1775.[3][4]
Geography
The cliffs at Point Grenville are 120 feet high and numerous sea stacks composed of volcanic rock protrude in the water surrounding the headlands, sometimes called "volcanic breccia".[5][6] The feature is dominated by consolidated bedrock, with both sandy beaches and boulder fields in the vicinity. Deep cracks and folds create an uneven, pockmarked terrain.[7] Offshore is the prominent Grenville Arch. Fossils found in the siltstone beds formed from the ancient ocean floor suggest that they date to 45 to 50 million years ago, some of the oldest found on the Washington coast.[8]
On top of the point, the ground slopes seaward, as the headland formed from a larger seaward outcropping that eroded 17,000 or more years ago. At its maximum extent the headland likely extended several miles west into the Pacific. Piddocks, a tidal species of bivalve molluscs, have formed borings in the uplifted bedrock surface.[9]
To the south, the point creates a sheltered bay, often called Grenville Bay, and along the shore forms a headland-bay beach, also called a logarithmic spiral beach. The promontory serves as a dividing point on the Washington coast between the rocky coastline to the north and the sandier, wider beaches and spits south of the point.[10]
History
Prior to European contact, the point and the area around it were inhabited by the Quinault Nation. There were a variety of names for the headland in the Quinault language referring to its geographic features, including a’tsak, meaning "Inside Point" and o’lamix ci’tks, meaning "Soft Sand Point".[11] The site is significant to the Quinault people as a useful lookout and a sacred location for spiritual practices and rites of passage.[12]
On July 12, 1775, the expedition of Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra and Bruno de Heceta anchored the Santiago and Sonora near Grenville Bay and sent a large party ashore to claim the land for Spain, becoming the first Europeans to set foot on what is now Washington state. The next day, a smaller party came ashore to resupply. Quadra reports that this smaller party of six men was attacked by a group of several hundred Quinaults who killed four and wounded the other two such that they succumbed to their injuries while swimming back to the ships. More of the local Quinault then surrounded the ships in canoes as they made an effort to depart through the shoals of the bay. Quadra called the spot Punta de los Mártires ("Point of the Martyrs") after the Spanish sailors killed in the Quinault attack.[13]
The 1791-1795 expedition of George Vancouver passed by on April 28, 1792. Vancouver listed the promontory as Point Grenville on his charts after William Wyndham Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville, then Secretary of State of the United Kingdom and a close personal friend of his.[14] Vancouver published a profile engraving of the point in his work recollecting the expedition, A Voyage of Discovery.[15] In 2013, the Quinault Nation renamed the headland to Point Haynisisoos, meaning “thundering elk" in Quinault, after tribal elder Phillip E. Martin, who was known by that name. He was an advocate for the point's preservation and significance to the tribe.[16]
Beginning in June 1945, a United States Coast GuardLORAN-A (long-range) hyperbolic radio station for offshore navigation was located at the point. It began as a Mobile Unit, but permanent buildings were erected in 1946, and re-constructed in 1954. The first pulse recurrence rates were 2H4, paired with Cape Blanco, Oregon and 2H5, paired with Spring Island, British Columbia (near Kyuquot) but in 1971 these were changed to broadcast at 1L0 and 1L1, respectively. After a reduction in scale beginning in 1976, operations fully ceased in December 1979, and the station was disestablished in March 1980. At its peak in 1948, the station was home to one officer and 19 enlisted.[17]
Ecology
Point Grenville is an intertidal study site for the Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Network (MARINe), and the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary has conducted Long-Term Monitoring Surveys there since 2008. Target aquatic species include Common Acorn Barnacles, California mussels, surfgrass, and Ochre stars.[18] It is also home to large Sitka spruce trees.
Copalis National Wildlife Refuge, which includes the outlying rocks of Point Grenville, was one of the earliest National Wildlife Refuges, having been created alongside Flattery Rocks National Wildlife Refuge and Quillayute Needles National Wildlife Refuge by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907.[19] The vulnerable population of seabirds that nest in the area that are of particular ecological concern.
In 1969 and 1970, 59 sea otters were translocated from Amchitka Island to Washington, and released near La Push and Point Grenville. The translocated population is estimated to have declined to between 10 and 43 individuals before increasing, reaching 208 individuals in 1989. As of 2017, the population was estimated at over 2,000 individuals, and their range extends from Point Grenville in the south to Cape Flattery in the north and east to Pillar Point along the Strait of Juan de Fuca.[20]
Tourism
The Point is home to the tribal access-only Haynisisoos Park on the site of the former LORAN station, which now features a totem pole carved from an 800-year-old Western red cedar, dedicated to Emmett Oliver, a Quinault Tribal Elder. It served as the terminus for the Paddle to Quinault event in 2013, part of the annual Tribal Canoe Journey.[21] This event saw nearly 15,000 people gather at the point to watch the arrival of 89 canoes, representing around 100 Northwest tribes and Canadian First Nations, as well as native Hawaiian and Māori groups.[22]
Detail of the Totem Pole at Haynisisoos Park, erected during the 2013 Paddle to Quinault.
Prior to the late 1960s, the beach at Point Grenville was a popular surfing and recreation destination with the general public. While the local outdoors club The Mountaineers had been visiting since at least the 1920s,[23] surfers first noted its consistent surf in the 1940s and 1950s, with its popularity booming by 1960. In 1970, it was featured on a Smith-Western Company postcard, published in Tacoma, Washington.[24] Issues with littering and defacement of the area, including graffiti on the rocks and the destruction of clam beds, led to the closure of the beach to the public in 1969. Until 2012, the beach was still accessible to the public with a tribal pass, but this was further restricted to preserve the ecology of the coastline. Accompaniment by an enrolled member of the Quinault Nation is now required for access to both the beach and point. The 1969 decision was upheld by the Washington State Office of the Attorney General in 1970, despite a long-held customary use rules regarding access to ocean beaches in Washington State, on the basis of an 1873 Executive Order by President Ulysses S. Grant that withdrew the reservation’s lands from the public domain.[25]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
