Lake Whatcom

This lake, located in Skagit County, is a natural body of fresh water approximately ten miles in length, about one mile wide in places, and distinguished by three basins, separated by sills.

The northernmost basin (Silver Beach Basin) is the primary locus of residential use. The southern basin, a more remote region, has a depth of about 328 feet. The middle basin, the shallowist, divided from the southern basin by the Strawberry sill, has a floor at about 40 feet. It is from this basin the Bellingham water supply is withdrawn for the city's 85,000 residents. This accounts for about 11% of the lake's outflow.

The lake is fed by chilly tributaries from the east — its Lummi Indian name means "loud waters." The entering water takes about 7.4 years to work its way through the lake before exiting into Whatcom Creek, which then makes its way west to Bellingham Bay after traversing the northern part of the City of Bellingham. The Lake Whatcom watershed covers 55 square miles.

The lake has just one island, 3-acre Reveille Island. This is the cite of the tragic drowning of the two Hildebrand siblings, Irvin (13) and Alma (21) in 1910.

When explorers/settlers first came to the lake, it had been hunting grounds for the Salish Tribes of Indians, but they were pushed out by the Lummi Tribe around 1800 when the Lummi people were forced from their San Juan Island territory by indigenous people from the north.

The Lummi people do not function as a tribe so much as families in villages. They do not appoint or designate "chiefs," but simply acknowledge existing leadership in the village. Originally from Vancouver Island and the San Juans, they are now principally in the Bellingham area — mainly on the peninsula off northeast Bellingham.

The white settlers engaged in extensive logging initially. In recent years, New Whatcom (as the area is known) has become quite populated with residential and summer homes. View is looking south east. Silver Beach Basin appears in the lower portion; snow is seen on the Cascade Range in the distance. What appears to be a highway is actually power transmission right-of-way.

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Some information for this article was gathered partially from Wikipedia.