A dream for Oak Harbor began in 1892, when perhaps 100 people lived in the little town. What is today Pioneer Way consisted of half a dozen stores that provided essentials. These essentials were brought by boats that unloaded in the slough, a salt waterway that ran from downtown to Freund’s Hill.

A few years ago, an old timer told us of coming to Oak Harbor and being carried from the boat to the shore, across mudflats of an outgoing tide.

Joe and John Maylor grew up on Maylor’s Point, where their father landed in 1852. The boys rowed from the point and up the slough to attend the first school on the hill. In 1892, their dream began to take shape. Maylor’s Store was built. This general store had an extension that one day held the post office.

Along with this store, Oak Harbor’s dock grew from the muddy tideflats. This early dock would change the face of the little town on North Whidbey.

Early settlers took land that had to be cleared and planted; barns had to be built for livestock and storage. The Maylor’s pier was a godsend to farmers and business men to say nothing of the residents who found they could take a boat to Everett or Seattle in a day when Whidbey Island depended on ferries to reach the mainland. Oak Harbor’s downtown began to grow.

By 1915 the business section of town extended from a mill to a meat market on the upper side of Pioneer Way; there were no new buildings on the slough side of the street. Somehow, everyone knew that the slough was destined for oblivion. Part of the slough and what was known as Kiester’s Marsh had to be drained to make room for a downtown Oak Harbor, and that was just what happened. The slough went first; then the marsh was drained, making solid ground for establishments that today make up the business center of Oak Harbor.

And in the late 1920s, the Washington Cooperative Egg and Poultry Association took over the dock, building a large building on the end of the dock for an office, egg candling and grain storage, as well as a shipping and passenger point.

At one side of the dock near the channel was a logged off space where local fishermen could tie up their boats — by then a few boats even had small motors. Our family had a big wide rowboat that could accommodate five or six people.

Dad was the fisherman in the family, and regularly rowed down past Coupeville, fished, then rowed home. That was a day’s work.

The dock was an important part of Oak Harbor. The steamer left at 6:30 a.m. to sail to Seattle and returned at 6:30 p.m. with mail and a load of passengers.

But that was in the days yore of the small settlement on the edge of a bay. A town with no sewer, city water or garbage collection. The garbage went over the bank. Maylor’s Dock burned in a spectacular fire in 1966. When the flames had consumed the building and pier, little was left but a few charred pilings.

Today great change has taken place and in the near future greater change is coming. Whidbey Island Naval Air Station is growing along with businesses and homes.

A college is expanding and Oak Harbor will have more higher education options. Shopping areas will increase and the only way to get off the island to the north is Highway 20, a crowded roadway that leads across Deception Pass to the mainland. When the bridge across the pass was built, it put the two North Whidbey ferries out of business. Today ferries leave from Keystone and Clinton. Tourist boats come from Seattle to Coupeville and even to Captain Whidbey Inn. But alas, no pier is available in Oak Harbor aside from moorage at the Yacht Club.

In Oak Harbor, the PBY Memorial Association is planning to have a PBY museum. This going concern will keep the memory of the big planes of World War II that flew from and landed at the Seaplane Base alive. Downtown Oak Harbor, the Old Town, has an exciting future in the tourist business, providing a pier brings tourist boats to visit and to provide another option of travel to islanders. There can’t be another way out. The pier has to be considered first.

Dorothy Neil has been writing about local people, places and history for more than 50 years. Her 10 books chronicle island life and times.

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