On the afternoon of April 26, 2025, community members and public officials gathered to celebrate the recent public opening of Bellingham’s Little Squalicum Pier.
The 1,248-foot wooden pier, built initially for a cement company in 1912, now includes modern features like deck grating, pedestrian guardrails, and wind- and solar-powered lighting. It is the longest public pier in Washington and the longest on the North American West Coast between White Rock, British Columbia and Pacifica, California, which lies just south of San Francisco.
“Pausing to celebrate this milestone inspired appreciation and awe for this beautiful place,” says Bellingham Mayor Kim Lund, who attended the opening celebration with several former mayors. “The pier gives us a new perspective on our waterfront and a truly unique opportunity for everyone in our community to experience Bellingham Bay.”
Long and Necessary on Bellingham Bay
Whatcom Museum Archivist Jeff Jewell notes that Little Squalicum Pier is the last pier of its kind on Bellingham Bay, recalling an era when the area’s industrial-centered waterfront looked quite different from what it does today.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the growth of communities surrounding the bay resulted in numerous docks, wharves and piers that aided the ship-and-rail-heavy movement of goods and people.
And there are, technically, differences between the terms ‘wharf,’ ‘pier,’ and ‘dock.’
In their most basic definition, wharves and piers are structures where ships load and unload cargo. A wharf runs parallel or at some angle to shore, while a pier runs perpendicular to land and juts straight into the water. A dock is simply a place to tie up a boat and often floats on the water, whereas piers and wharves are built over water.
These terms often appear to be used interchangeably in both historical and contemporary settings; however, many structures called wharves were – technically speaking – actually piers.
These structures were needed when local waterways emptied naturally into the bay’s tidal flats, Jewell explains. Large ships couldn’t get too close to shore without running aground in shallow water, making a pier the only practical way to load and unload cargo. When waterfront dredging and subsequent fill-in of the waterfront occurred in the early 1900s, ships unloaded closer to shore – making most of the lengthy piers obsolete.
A Short History of Long, Whatcom County Piers
Chief among these long piers was Colony Wharf, which extended a full mile into Bellingham Bay, Jewell says.
Originally built around 1883, the wharf was initially constructed by a utopian community group called the “Kansas Colony.” Upon migrating to Washington, they hoped their new pier would aid a potential logging mill capable of sustaining the building of a new community within Washington State, according to the Port of Bellingham website.
Other lengthy piers, including the Sehome Wharf and G Street Wharf, eventually joined Colony Wharf.
Ella Higginson, the state’s first Poet Laureate and a longtime Bellingham resident, arrived in the area in October 1888 aboard the vessel Idaho. Setting foot on to Colony Wharf, she later recalled being met by a man with a smoky lantern and wheelbarrow to hold mail, who warned her of “plumb terrible holes” in the wharf.
“If you happen to step into one,” the man supposedly told her, “you’re a goner from Gonesville, sure.”
According to old newspaper reports, the last remnants of Colony Wharf were likely torn down sometime after April 1908. That same January, a storm-weakened section of G Street Wharf collapsed, throwing three men and a team of horses into the bay. The men were injured but survived; the horses were not as lucky. By 1914, it appears the original G Street Wharf was also all but a memory.
Little Squalicum Pier was primarily built in 1912 and deemed basically complete when the Bellingham Herald reported on it in February 1913. The pier was mainly constructed to move oil between steamer ships, and the nearby Olympic Portland Cement Company plant was set to open the following month, the Herald reported.
Large oil pumps were built on the pier to help fill a 55,000-barrel tank at the plant, along with a railroad track and other related freight machinery. Their pier continued to be used for cement company purposes until 1987. The following decades saw use only by seagulls and adventurous humans seeking activities like skinny-dipping, Jewell says.
The pier remained owned by the Lehigh Hanson/Heidelberg Cement Group until November 2021, when it was transferred to the City of Bellingham. The pier extends from deeded land owned by the city, while the Port of Bellingham owns and manages the surrounding intertidal area. The Washington State Department of Natural Resources manages the surrounding waters of the outer section.
Opening and Visiting Little Squalicum Pier
Making the pier available for public use has been a goal for at least three mayoral administrations, said Melissa Morin, the communications and community relations director for the City of Bellingham. But it was about $1.6 million in funding from the city’s Greenways Levy – which uses property taxes to fund the development and upkeep of Bellingham trails, parks and open spaces – that finally made the goal a reality.
The pier’s opening was also made possible through an agreement with the city’s Comprehensive Plan and 2010 Little Squalicum Park Master Plan, along with the state’s Shoreline Master Program and consultations with local indigenous tribes and the United States Army Corp of Engineers.
The name “Little Squalicum Pier” wasn’t chosen until August 2024, after the city received feedback from more than 900 community members on what to call the pier. The Parks and Recreation Advisory Board ultimately chose the name, which was then approved by the city council.
Squalicum Pier may also be eligible for future listing in the National Register of Historic Places. For now, it is open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. If you visit, know that dogs must be leashed, jumping from the pier is prohibited, and fishing is allowed under Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife rules.
