By LARRY LANGE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Indianola, as a place, was just a bluff above the bay when it was inhabited by the Suquamish Indians, one of the Salish group that occupied Puget Sound before the arrival of the first white settlers.

The tribe remained in the area after the Port Madison Indian Reservation was created by the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott. The reservation boundary still encompasses the unincorporated town but most town residents own their own land and are not tribal members.

After the treaty was signed, some tribal members given allotments of land inside the reservation sold them to whites or left them to heirs who married whites, who in turn cleared them so the settlement could be built.

Locals say the community was named for the Indians and for a man named Ole Hansen, who filed an early plat of the town in 1916. Seattle banks and developers quickly showed interest, buying off tracts and selling lots to early settlers who were brought to the bluff settlement by boat.

"They'd offer a free picnic lunch to people to take the ferry," recalled long-time resident Jack Henry.

To get visitors to shore, a 960-foot pier was built to allow early ferries to dock beyond the low-tide mark. That done, salesmen "began running weekend steamer excursions direct from Seattle to Indianola. The boat ride took an hour," according to the community's 1998 history, "Indianola / A Community Memoir."

The excursions established the town's reputation as a vacation spot where Seattle families could buy a 40-by-90-foot lot and build weekend cabins. That's beginning to change, residents say, though the travel time hasn't: It's still an hour from downtown Seattle, even using modern automobiles and ferries.