Bainbridge Island

For thousands of years, members of the Suquamish people and their ancestors lived on the land now called Bainbridge Island. There were nine villages on the island; this included winter villages at Port Madison, Battle Point, Point White, Lynwood Center, Port Blakely, and Eagle Harbor, as well as summer villages at Manzanita, Fletcher Bay, and Rolling Bay.

In 1792, English explorer Captain George Vancouver spent several days with his ship HMS Discovery anchored off Restoration Point at the southern end of Bainbridge Island while boat parties surveyed other parts of Puget Sound. Vancouver spent a day exploring Rich Passage, Port Orchard, and Sinclair Inlet. He failed to find Agate Passage, and so his maps show Bainbridge Island as a peninsula. Vancouver named Restoration Point on May 29, the anniversary of the English Restoration, in honor of King Charles II.

In 1841, US Navy Lieutenant Charles Wilkes visited the island while surveying the Pacific Northwest. Lt. Wilkes named the island after Commodore William Bainbridge, commander of the frigate USS Constitution in the War of 1812. Settlers originally used Bainbridge Island as a center for the logging and shipbuilding industries. The island was known for huge and accessible cedars, which were especially in demand for ships’ masts. The original county seat of Kitsap County was at Port Madison on the island’s north end.

In 1855, the Suquamish tribe relinquished their claim to Bainbridge Island by signing the Point Elliott Treaty. The Suquamish agreed to cede all of their territory (which included Bainbridge Island) to the United States in exchange for a reservation at Port Madison and fishing rights to Puget Sound.

The first generation of Japanese immigrants, the Issei, came in 1883. During World War II, Japanese-American residents of Bainbridge Island were the first to be sent to internment camps, an event commemorated by the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial, which opened in 2011. They were held by the US government through the duration of the war for fear of espionage. A High-frequency direction finding (HFDF) station was established here by the Navy during the war. These radio intercept sites along the West Coast were used to track Japanese warships and merchant marine vessels as far away as the Western Pacific. The other West Coast stations were in California at Point Arguello, Point Saint George, Farallon Islands and San Diego.

The city of Bainbridge Island has occupied the entire island since February 28, 1991, when the former city of Winslow (around 1.5 square miles (3.9 km2) of land on Eagle Harbor, incorporated August 9, 1947) annexed the rest of the island. Since the 1960s, Bainbridge Island has become an increasingly affluent bedroom community of Seattle, a 35-minute ride away on the Washington State Ferries.

Bainbridge Island was formed during the last ice age—13,000 to 15,000 years ago—when the 3,000-foot-thick (910 m) Vashon Glacier scraped out the Puget Sound and Hood Canal basins.

Bainbridge Island is located within the Puget Sound Basin, east of the Kitsap Peninsula, directly east of the Manette Peninsula and west of the city of Seattle. The island is approximately 5 miles (8 km) wide and 10 miles (16 km) long, encompassing nearly 17,778 acres (71.95 km2), and is one of the larger islands in Puget Sound.

Bainbridge Island shorelines border the main body of Puget Sound, as well as Port Orchard Bay, a large protected embayment, and two high-current tidal passages, Rich Passage and Agate Pass. The island is characterized by an irregular coastline of approximately 53 miles (85 km), with numerous bays and inlets and a significant diversity of other coastal land forms, including spits, bluffs, dunes, lagoons, cuspate forelands, tombolos, tide flats, streams and tidal deltas, islands, and rocky outcrops. The high point is 425-foot (130 m) Toe Jam Hill.

On the Kitsap Peninsula, Bremerton and Poulsbo lie across the Port Orchard channel to the west, and the city of Port Orchard lies across Rich Passage to the south.

The island is quite hilly and is known for its popular Chilly Hilly bicycle ride every February. This ride has been the unofficial start to the bicycling season in the Pacific Northwest since 1975.

Bainbridge Island is connected to the Kitsap Peninsula by the Agate Pass Bridge, carrying SR 305 over Agate Passage. The only other public way off the island is by the Seattle–Bainbridge ferry, the Washington State Ferries service from the dock at Winslow in Eagle Harbor to Colman Dock (Pier 52) in Seattle.

Bainbridge Island has four centers of commerce. Winslow is the downtown core and has most of the shopping and dining. Lynwood Center on the south end of the island has several restaurants and a small hotel. Fletcher Bay, which is centrally located, has a small grocery store and one restaurant. Rolling Bay, on the east side of the island, is a small commercial center with Bay Hay and Feed, the Bud Hawk Post Office and several commercial shops.

The local newspapers are the weekly Bainbridge Island Review, Kitsap Sun, and the Bainbridge Islander.

Public schools

Bainbridge Island is served by the Bainbridge Island School District, which houses the following public schools:

• Capt. Johnston Blakely Elementary School (K-4)
• Capt. Charles Wilkes Elementary School (K-4)
• Ordway Elementary School (K-4)
• Sonoji Sakai Intermediate School (5-6)
• Woodward Middle School (7-8)
• Bainbridge High School (9-12)

BISD also offers home-based and student-directed educational programming under the umbrella of the Commodore Options School:

• Mosaic Home Education Partnership (K-8)
• Odyssey Multiage Program (1-8)
• Eagle Harbor High School (9-12)

Private schools

• Montessori Country School (PK-6)
• Madrona School (PK-8)
• St. Cecilia Catholic School (PK-8)
• The Island School (K-5)
• Carden Country School (K-8)
• Hyla Middle School (6-8)

The Puget Sound Naval Academy, formerly the Moran School, operated on the island from 1914 to 1933, and then again from 1937 to 1951.

Sports and recreation

The community has been especially concerned with preserving green space and keeping a tight control over development, both residential and commercial. The Bainbridge Island Land Trust, city and park district are instrumental in maintaining island open space.

Sports programs are successful. In 2001, Bainbridge Island Little League were represented in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania at the Little League World Series. The island’s high school lacrosse team is known for numerous state titles, the most recent coming on May 19, 2007 over rival Mercer Island. The island’s high school sailing team has been the reigning Northwest Interscholastic Sailing Association district double handed team racing champions for the past five seasons and is ranked 12th in the nation. In 2009, the Bainbridge High School Fastpitch team won the Washington 3A State Title. The team also played in the championship game in 2010. In 2011, 2012 and 2018, the Bainbridge High School Girls Lacrosse team won the state championship.

The sport of pickleball was invented by the family of congressman Joel Pritchard at their summer home on Bainbridge Island in 1965. It is similar to badminton and tennis, but played with paddles and a lightweight plastic ball.

The community has been especially concerned with preserving green space and keeping a tight control over development, both residential and commercial. The Bainbridge Island Land Trust, city and park district are instrumental in maintaining island open space.

Sports programs are successful. In 2001, Bainbridge Island Little League were represented in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania at the Little League World Series. The island’s high school lacrosse team is known for numerous state titles, the most recent coming on May 19, 2007 over rival Mercer Island. The island’s high school sailing team has been the reigning Northwest Interscholastic Sailing Association district double handed team racing champions for the past five seasons and is ranked 12th in the nation. In 2009, the Bainbridge High School Fastpitch team won the Washington 3A State Title. The team also played in the championship game in 2010. In 2011, 2012 and 2018, the Bainbridge High School Girls Lacrosse team won the state championship.

The sport of pickleball was invented by the family of congressman Joel Pritchard at their summer home on Bainbridge Island in 1965. It is similar to badminton and tennis, but played with paddles and a lightweight plastic ball.