1550 ❖ (circa) OZETTE Mud Slide on Olympic Peninsula

Ozette, Washington.
Washington State University researchers
us a water hose to wash mud from a
buried Native Longhouse believed to be
500 or more years old. This site is on
Cape Alava, on the western coast of the
Olympic Peninsula. In the background
can be seen Ozette Island and the Pacific.
Click image to enlarge.
Photo dated 27 July 1970
from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society

Archaeological consultant Milfie Howell

holds a carved cedar dorsal whale fin

studded with 700 sea otter teeth;

the only such object ever found.

It was taken from a dig at Ozette,

a Native village called the 'Pompeii of the West,'

because of a massive mudslide years ago.

The whale fin and other objects from the dig

are on exhibit at a museum in Neah Bay, WA.

Photo by Charles Hillinger, 1979.

Photograph from the archives of the 

Saltwater People Historical Society©

Several Pacific Coast houses in Ozette, a Native American fishing village on the Olympic Peninsula were buried in a sudden mudslide, ca. 1550.

      From ~400 AD through the 1900s Ozette was the base of whaling operations by people known as MAKAH. Coastal erosion in 1970 exposed the village ruins. 

      When the ruins of Ozette began eroding out on their beaches they asked the WSU archaeologists to help out. The project was one of the first joint Native American and academic projects ever conducted in the US.

Text from the Newsletter of College of Arts & Sciences, Washington State University.