Rock Point

Before it became Taylor Shellfish, this little point was the base for Rock Point Oysters. To get down here you follow the Taylor sign at the hairpin on Chuckanut and drop down Oyster Creek to the tracks. There's a small marsh at the creek mouth trapped behind the railroad grade (which was built around the turn of the century) and a few dilapidated buildings, remnants I suppose, of the camp that housed the convicts who built Chuckanut Drive in the 1920s.

The shoreline is typical of this southern section of Chuckanut - steep rocky slopes plunging into the deep mud of the bay. There's not much beach down here, since the railroad sits on top of whatever beach there might have once been. The beaches in these pictures are artificial pockets, created by human structures. That's not all that's anthropogenic. The stream mouth is kept from meandering across the oyster beds by a rock dike and the area around the oyster operation is a 20th-century shell midden (historic photo).