MARROWSTONE ISLAND — Rita Kepner laments the loss of West Nolton Road, the last public access to Kilisut Harbor’s tidelands between Mystery Bay and Fort Flagler state parks.
“We were thrilled by the road’s public access,” Kepner says, looking out the panoramic view window inside her Flagler Road home, which overlooks Kilisut Harbor on West Marrowstone Island.
Kepner, who since 1976 has lived with her husband, John, in the bluff-top home he built by hand, believes that neighbors should share beach access.
That’s why the Kepners allow access via their steep wooden stairway to the tidelands below, the former site of a fish and packing company and Native American fishing grounds that have occasionally turned up artifacts.
Property vacated
The West Nolton Road access, which allowed beach access to even those bound to wheelchairs, is no more, the result of court proceedings three years ago in which the county agreed in a Superior Court quiet title proceeding to vacate the property to owners Dennis and Joanne Dille and Dean and Jeanne Straub.
They are the Kepners neighbors to the south.
Today, fill dirt that buried the road supports lush landscaping and an abrupt bulkhead rests where the gently sloping road once led to the clamming and recreational beach shared by neighbors.
During the September 2002 Superior Court proceeding, county Deputy Civil Prosecutor David Alvarez did not object on the county’s behalf to releasing the short road to the beach.
After T.G. Nolton in 1889 “gave to the public forever” a number of Marrowstone streets, including West Nolton Road, the road was later placed on the county’s maintenance log 100 years later, Kepner said.
At the time, it provided limited parking and road access to the shoreline for what Kepner and other neighbors believed was in perpetuity under Nolton’s “East Port Townsend addition.”
Jefferson County commissioners on Tuesday removed from their consent agenda a proposal to take West Nolton Road off the county road log for maintenance purposes.
The action came as Kepner, among about 20 residents who once used the road, crowded the commissioners’ chambers to protest the action.
