Qualla: Point Grenville

Point Grenville: Introduction

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0. On July 12, 1775, the Santiago and Sonora dropped anchor off a rocky headland on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, their crews struggling against underwater shoals that would claim ships for two centuries. When the Spanish sailors waded ashore, they became the first Europeans to set foot on what is now Washington state. The Quinault people had been watching from the 120-foot cliffs above - from a place they called a'tsak, 'Inside Point,' a sacred lookout used for generations. What happened next gave the headland one of its many names: Punta de los Martires, Point of the Martyrs. Today the Quinault call it Point Haynisisoos - 'thundering elk.'

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Image: Chris Light | CC BY-SA 4.0

Point Grenville: Fifty Million Years of Stone

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gordon, George W; Gordon & McKenzie, Public domain. The cliffs at Point Grenville are volcanic breccia, a jagged patchwork of ancient rock shot through with deep cracks and folds. Fossils in the siltstone beds date to 45 to 50 million years ago, among the oldest found on the Washington coast. Offshore, sea stacks jut from the wate...

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Image: Gordon, George W; Gordon & McKenzie | Public domain

Point Grenville: First Contact and Its Costs

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0. Bruno de Heceta and a Catholic priest named Benito de la Sierra performed a ceremony on the beach claiming the land for Spain's Nueva Galicia. They named the spot Rada de Bucareli, after the Viceroy of New Spain. The next day, a resupply party of six came ashore. Several hundred ...

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Image: Chris Light | CC BY-SA 4.0

Point Grenville: Shipwrecks and Signal Beams

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0. The same shoals that nearly trapped Bodega y Quadra's expedition became a graveyard. The lumber ship Decatur went down in 1865, the French vessel Lilly Grace in 1886, the fishing trawler Tahoe in 1931, and the SS Seagate in 1956. To help mariners avoid these hazards, a Coast Guar...

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Image: Chris Light | CC BY-SA 4.0

Point Grenville: The Otters Come Home

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0. Before 1911, tall wooden derricks lined Point Grenville Beach, platforms from which sharpshooters picked off sea otters for the fur trade. The otters vanished from Washington's coast entirely. On July 31, 1969, wildlife managers released 29 sea otters translocated from Amchitka I...

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Image: Chris Light | CC BY-SA 4.0

Point Grenville: A Place Reclaimed

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0. Where the LORAN station once beamed navigation signals, Haynisisoos Park now stands. A totem pole carved from an 800-year-old Western red cedar honors Quinault elder Emmett Oliver. In 2013, during the Paddle to Quinault, nearly 15,000 people gathered to watch 89 canoes arrive, re...

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Image: Chris Light | CC BY-SA 4.0