Coupeville waterfront on Whidbey
— a wharf the steamers still half-remember.
Not only on a wall.
“The second-oldest town in Washington, on Penn Cove, halfway up Whidbey Island. The wharf has stood at the foot of Front Street since 1905 and once met the Mosquito Fleet steamers running between Seattle and the San Juans. The cove is a sheltered tide-fed bay famous for the mussels grown on long lines just offshore. The town and its waterfront sit inside Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve, the first reserve of its kind in the United States, set aside in 1978.
Coupeville waterfront on Whidbey, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Coupeville sits on Penn Cove on the central east side of Whidbey Island, in Island County, Washington. It was founded in 1853 by Captain Thomas Coupe and incorporated in 1910, which makes it the second-oldest incorporated town in the state. The population is roughly two thousand. The waterfront block fronts Penn Cove, a sheltered bay between Whidbey and the Olympic foothills across Admiralty Inlet, and the historic wharf at the foot of Front Street dates to 1905. The town is fifty miles north of Seattle by way of the Mukilteo-Clinton ferry and Washington State Route 525.
Penn Cove is a tide-fed inlet about five miles long and a mile wide, with a soft mud bottom and steady cold-water exchange from Admiralty Inlet. Penn Cove Shellfish has farmed mussels here on suspended longlines since 1975, and the cove is the largest mussel-growing operation on the West Coast. The annual Penn Cove MusselFest each March draws boats, chowder makers, and roughly a thousand visitors to the wharf. The bay also hosts crab and Manila clam; the Salish Sea waters average about fifty degrees Fahrenheit. Orca pods pass through Saratoga Passage just east of the cove.
Coupeville sits inside Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve, the first national historical reserve in the United States, designated by Congress in 1978 to preserve the agricultural and maritime character of central Whidbey. The reserve includes Fort Casey, Ebey's Prairie, and roughly seventeen thousand acres of farmland and shoreline. The Coupeville Wharf still operates as a small public dock with a chowder house and a local arts space. Access from the south is the Mukilteo-Clinton ferry and a thirty-mile drive north on State Route 525 and 20; from the west, the Port Townsend-Coupeville ferry crosses directly from the Olympic Peninsula.