You could call him Mr. Ebey’s Landing.

Over the last couple of decades, Rob Harbour has become closely associated with the stretch of prairie, the misty bluffs, woods and the historic buildings that make up Ebey’s Landing National Historical Reserve of Central Whidbey.

As manager of the reserve, Harbour has worked both in the forefront and behind the scenes to protect more than 2,000 acres of the nation’s first historical reserve. He worked with local governments to pass laws to protect the land. He found money. He negotiated, cajoled and bluffed. He even haggled with Hollywood.

“I can’t think of Ebey without thinking of Rob. It’s so much a part of his being,” said Len Barson, the government relations director with The Nature Conservancy. He worked with Harbour in successful efforts to permanently protect hundreds of acres of prime land in the reserve.

But now Harbour, a native Whidbey islander, is stepping down, even though he feels the next few years could be a critical time for the reserve. But it’s a good time for change, he said, with new, reinvigorated members on the board “stepping up to the plate.”

“It’s time for me to move on and let someone else develop a new staff and take it to the next level,” he said.

After a nine-month search, the Trust Board for the reserve is close to naming a replacement for Harbour, who has been working part-time in recent months.

It’s an exciting and sad time for Harbour. He’s looking forward to taking some time off and deciding what he wants to do next with his life.

“In 50 years, when I’m 103, I can look out over Ebey’s Reserve and feel pretty good about it,” he said.

But it’s hard to let go. Harbour is the kind of guy who seems to have a finger in every pot, who knows the back story on everyone and everything that happens within earshot of Central Whidbey.

He was the perfect guy for the job from the start.

The 17,572-acre reserve was created in 1978 by an act of Congress in order to protect a working landscape of farmers’ fields and pastures, as well as historic buildings and scenic vistas. The town of Coupeville lies in the middle of the reserve, which runs from a jagged line north of Arnold Road to the Navy’s outlying landing field southeast of the town.

The reserve was originally envisioned as a unique — even experimental — national park in which most of the land is in private hands.

The reserve was created “to preserve and protect a rural community which provides an unbroken historic record from … 19th century exploration and settlement in Puget Sound to the present time,” the 1978 act reads.

But it wasn’t until 1988 that a group of Coupeville folks approached Harbour, a local land-use consultant, to help them create a Trust Board to manage the group. Four partners — federal parks, state parks, the county and the town — are involved in the reserve, but the efforts didn’t have a central control.

“The reserve needed an entity that was just going to advocate for the reserve,” Harbour said.

Today, the Trust Board is composed of seven residents appointed by the town and county governments, a representative of State Parks, and a representative from the National Park Service.

Harbour managed the Trust Board from his home for years, but became a full-time staff member in 2000.

“I think Ebey’s Landing is a wonderful testament to the work of so many people,” Barson said, “but Rob above everybody else. He was there through thick and thin.”

The work of the reserve manager, Harbour said, is all about forging partnerships. Unfortunately, it was also all about crisis management.

Conservation

through crisis

The crises came when large swatches of land were up for sale and ripe for development.

The first potential calamity occurred when the Engle family, which had been farming Central Whidbey for 150 years, went into bankruptcy. Harbour helped broker a deal in which the National Park Service acquired the two farms, with 230 acres and a dozen buildings, and allowed the family to continue to farm.

In the mid-1990s, the state tried to subdivide and sell off the Game Farm on historic Smith Prairie. Whidbey Environmental Action Network sued the state, while Harbour and others lobbied the Legislature to delay the sale. Harbour eventually tracked down Au Sable, a non-profit environmental education organization, and convinced them to buy the property intact.

Harbour forged a relationship with Robert Pratt, a former Coupeville resident who owned hundreds of acres in the heart of Ebey’s Landing. Pratt owned the well-traveled bluff at Ebey’s Land, the historic Ferry House, a block house and hundreds of acres of farmland.

Harbour even acted as the middle-man between Pratt and Hollywood. A director wanted to use the Ferry House to film “Snow Falling on Cedars.” In return, the crew did repair work on the building and paid Pratt for the use.

“Pratt was crazy enough to maintain these buildings that had no use,” Harbour said. “Otherwise, they just would have melted away. He really cared.”

Pratt died in 1999, leaving the future of all his land in question.

This time, Harbour helped convince The Nature Conservancy to purchase the bulk of the estate. The nonprofit organization, in turn, donated much of the land or sold the development rights to the National Park Service, forever protecting it from development.

“The Nature Conservancy bit off a huge chunk up here,” Harbour said, “And we’re lucky they did.”

While Harbour played his role, he emphasized that a wide range of people — from local residents to outside do-gooders — also helped preserve the reserve in countless ways.

Reserve faces

many threats

While Harbour is proud of what the community has accomplished, he’s worried about the future. He first became interested in land use when he was growing up in Oak Harbor — his classmate was serial killer-to-be Robert Yates — and witnessed what he characterized as bad planning that allowed ugly development, turning his hometown into big-box and fast-food central.

Today, he sees a lack of interest among the younger generation of Central Whidbey in preserving the legacy they have inherited.

And there are real challenges. Preserving the open space of the reserve depends on the farmers who work the land. If farmers can no longer make a living, or if younger people don’t take the place of aging farmers, then the reserve faces the blight of subdivision and an influx of out-of-place trophy homes.

“Agriculture is in transition and it’s key that the agriculture community reinvents itself. Business as usual is over,” Harbour said. “Central Whidbey is rich with opportunity for branding and identity, a new kind of agriculture.”

Harbour also advocates unique measures to save the reserve from development.

“More land protection that needs to happen in the next four or five years,” he said. “The next four or five years is key.”

Local government needs to step up to the plate, he said, because federal funding will be increasingly hard to get.

“The Conservation Futures Fund could be raising twice as much right now,” he said. “It has to be developed to its full potential.”

Harbour said he’s going to try not to take some time off and not worry about these issues for awhile, but the reserve has a way of pulling him back in.