Six Decades Of History Preserved -- Sacrifice Saves Cama Beach From Becoming Playground For Rich

Travelers come from nearly every part of the world to experience the special rest place that is Cama Beach on Camano Island. One of the Northwest's Leave-it-the-way-nature-created-it vacation spots, with rustic cottages and bungalows, a mile of driftwood-lined and gently sloping beaches and 500 wooded park-like acres.

-- From an old brochure for Cama Beach Resort, which opened in 1934. ------------------------------------------------------------------- CAMANO ISLAND - Lee Risk grasps the magnifying glass with jittery hands and finds the perfect spot between his eyes and the newspaper.

Reading has become one of his favorite pastimes now that he doesn't have to keep up the more than two dozen cabins on what was once a thriving resort on Cama Beach.

From his comfortable chair, Risk, 85, has a million-dollar view of Puget Sound and Whidbey Island. Once, when he was stronger and his legs could carry him the distance, he sometimes walked the mile-long beach that is part of his property. The guests at his former resort lost themselves in the solitude of more than 400 acres of woods behind the bluffs.

The cabins were filled with families during the high summer season. Children played volleyball and tennis. Their parents dug in the sand along the beach and tried to make the most out of the 10-pound-per-cabin limit on clams.

Today, the resort exists only in spirit, its outer shell slowly falling apart.

Seagulls drop clams on the old concrete tennis court to get to the tasty meat. Many of the cedar cabins lean. Their roofs sag. Steps have disappeared. The boathouse is filled with old wooden boats, many of which no longer float. A 1941 Dodge truck has been gathering dust inside a garage for years.

Cama Beach Resort is a ghost town in the making.

When it closed in 1989, the resort had become an albatross around the neck of Risk's family. Yet the land was worth millions.

But it wasn't dollar signs Risk and his family saw when they looked at the falling cabins and the vast shoreline. There was something special about the place. There were nearly six decades of history behind the painted windows and somehow they wanted to preserve it.

Cama Beach was not about to become a rich man's playground, the family agreed. No tree would fall to make room for condominiums.

Today, the family's 435 acres, one-mile beach, small lake, deep forests covered with heavy timber and the old resort are about to become a state park.

Over the next several years, Washington State Parks will slowly buy the land at half its assessed value. Park officials hope to buy the first chunk of land, including a section of the beach, by next year.

Getting the land is a major coup, state officials said.

"This piece of land is one of a kind," said Carlyle Staab, lands agent for Washington State Parks. "It is very significant. Recreationally, it will be of major importance in the state for a very, very long time."

Getting to this point was an easy decision for Risk, his two daughters, Karen Hamalainen and Sandra Worthington, and their husbands, Asko and Gary, respectively.

They knew their land could fetch more than the $10 million the state has set aside to buy property in the next two fiscal years.

They had seen tiny lots on the waterfront selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. They had seen Camano Island property values double and triple in the past few years. And here they had one mile of accessible waterfront.

"We didn't want to develop it. We have an investment here, an emotional investment," said Karen Hamalainen, who along with her sister lived and worked at the resort.

They cleaned the cabins, answered the phones, washed dishes and did the laundry. They played with the younger guests when they were kids. The resort was their home.

Depending on the assessed value of the land, the family still will earn millions from the sale. But without their generous offer, the state would not have been able to afford it, Staab said.

The family has agreed to sell the first parcel - assessed at $2.7 million - for $900,000. Other installments will bring the state another parcel assessed at $2 million for only $1 million.

The family also has agreed to take part of the profits and use them to fix the resort, which will be open to environmental groups, churches and other organizations. The boathouse has been leased to the Center for Wooden Boats, which operates a facility on Lake Union in Seattle.

Several other community groups also have become involved in fixing the resort. Because of its cost, Cama Beach was low on the state's acquisition list, but lobbying and more than 3,000 signatures from residents and people throughout the state, moved it up.

`Recreation-conscious' owners

"The property owners are very recreation-conscious, very public-minded. They knew that private development would have had far greater impact than a public parks," Staab said.

Camano Island already has a state park, just south of Cama Beach. State officials said the parks will complement each other. Camano Island State Park, which receives 300,000 visitors a year, includes 6,700 feet of beachfront.

Selling the land to the state was the only way to keep the resort alive, the family said.

"The intent is to retain as much of the history of Cama Beach as possible," Staab said. "The owner's desire to retain some of that flavor and display it . . . those ideas are very synonymous with ours. We want to save the cabins, the boats and boathouse and build a museum and other things."

The Hamalainens already have been working on some of the cabins. The roof on one has been finished. Plenty more remain.

"Clear-cutting, that would be a crime," Asko Hamalainen said. "When a place like this is gone, it is gone forever."

Lee Risk, the patriarch of the family, started working at the resort as a young man. The land had been purchased in the early 1930s by his in-laws, Leroy and Lucy Stradley.

Risk said the resort seemed like a good investment at the time. Most of their clients came from the Seattle metropolitan area. They were not wealthy, just working families looking for a three-day gateway.

Shortly after World War II, the resort started losing clients. Residents could afford to buy their own boats and could travel farther for less money. The economic boom of the 1950s slowly killed the 10 to 15 resorts on Camano Island at the time.

Nothing worked to end decline

"We went all out to make it attractive for families," Risk said. His wife taught square-dancing and they hired a swimming teacher for the kids.

But nothing stopped the decline. Only Cama Beach made it to the 1980s, and barely.

"I worked here almost 60 years. We really appreciated this location. Now, I hope other people can enjoy it," Risk said.