Gold Rush pioneers, a Depression-era bridge and the Navy

By REBEKAH DENN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The largest settlement on the longest island in the continental United States, Oak Harbor was shaped by three twists of history.

The first was the end of the Gold Rush in California, which brought the town's three founders to the north end of Whidbey Island in 1849.

"They were in San Francisco for the Gold Rush, and, having just missed it, they sailed up the coast," says Oak Harbor native Carl Freund, great-great-nephew of founding father Ulrich Freund.

"The three of them each took a donation land claim in Oak Harbor, in the bay area itself, looking for a place to farm."

The second influence came in the Depression years, when the Civilian Conservation Corps completed the sweeping steel bridge across Deception Pass, linking Oak Harbor with the mainland by bridge as well as ferry, relieving some of its isolation.

"It was like being released from jail," says Del Anderson, former county commissioner. Anderson was 12 years old when he watched the 1935 ribbon-cutting, with island crowds surging across the bridge to meet the Anacortes crowds on the other side.

"It was quite a day," he recalls.

The biggest influence on Oak Harbor, though, came in wartime, when Naval Air Station Whidbey Island was commissioned in 1942. What had been a small farming town exploded overnight.

The town's identity has been inextricably linked with the military since those days, with even schoolchildren -- some 60 percent of whom are connected with the base -- knowing the difference between the EA-6B Prowlers and the P-3 aircraft flying overhead.

Though the bulk of his family's original 320-acre claim has long since been divided, sold or leased for development, Carl Freund was plowing some undeveloped land that remained as farmland earlier this month.

Freund, who left town to work as an aerospace engineer, recently returned to semiretire and help out his parents.

Oak Harbor's character hasn't essentially changed over the years he was gone, he says, nor has its needs.

"It's always had the Navy to rely on . . . but it's never stood alone, it never was able to develop its own characteristics," he says. "It's slowly heading in that direction, but it's very slow."

The Freund family has offered to donate a 10-acre plot near the waterfront park for a performing arts center, something that could enhance Oak Harbor, if the city can find the money to build the center, he says.

Another pioneer descendent is Ted Zylstra, who practices law in town as his great-uncle did for 50 years before him. Other Oak Harbor natives who attended the University of Washington with Zylstra stayed in the big city, he says.

"I came home. I've never regretted it."