Lily Point Park (Chelhtenem) | nature conservation park / area, NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, Native American

 nature conservation park / area, NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, Native American

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Conservation groups, government agencies and individuals purchased 280 acres at Lily Point at the southeastern tip in Point Roberts and will transfer it to Whatcom County Parks and Recreation for ongoing preservation and public recreation.
The shoreline, which has bluffs that feed sediment into the bay that sustains the beaches and tide-flats, is critical to the health of Puget Sound. The bay is also an important stopover site along the Pacific flyway for migrating shorebirds.
The shallow Lily Point tide-flats support over five million migratory shorebirds and waterfowl each year. These tide-flats are rich in plants, small fish and other creatures that are the base of the marine food web relied on by salmon, sea lions and endangered southern resident orcas.
This acquisition was supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grant Program, Whatcom Land Trust with a grant from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife's Estuary and Salmon Restoration Program and funding from Whatcom County Conservation Futures, the state Department of Ecology, U.S. Fish and Wildlife and numerous private contributions from both the United States and Canada. Many platforms for watching Orcas.

www.whatcomlandtrust.org/projects/lily-point/

"The history of Lily Point attests to its fecundity. Archeologists date human occupancy back at least 9000 years. For centuries, Coast Salish Native Peoples maintained their primary reef net fishery and a summer village for as many as 500 people at Lily Point.  Here the Lummi ancestors each year performed their most important “first salmon” ceremony to assure the annual return of the fish they depended on. They called this place Chelhtenem, “hang salmon for drying.” An 1881 newspaper reported 10,000 salmon caught by 3 reef nets in 6 hours."