Mud Bays: No Big Three

The best known “Big Three” comes from the automobile industry and refers to the three largest car makers in the United States: General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. There are also Big Threes in sports (LeBron James, Duane Wade, and Chris Bosh of the Miami Heat) and in World War II history (Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the Yalta Conference). But there is no Big Three when the category is Mud Bays in Washington.

Three bodies of salt water in Washington share the name Mud Bay. However, this might the first time the Mud Bay I live on, at the south end of Dyes Inlet, near Bremerton, has been mentioned in the same sentence as the other two: Mud Bay–Eld Inlet (near Olympia) and Mud Bay–Lopez Island. It doesn’t even rate an entry in the Washington Place Names database like they do.

Mud Bay–Eld Inlet is the best known Mud Bay in the state. The place names database describes it this way:

A bay at the head of Eld Inlet west of Olympia in northwest Thurston County. Oyster beds in the bay once produced the famous Olympia oysters. At low tides the name is descriptive.

At least two businesses (a coffee company and a pet food company) take their name from it. So does Mud Bay Road, which has an exit sign on northbound Highway 101. Thousands of drivers see the sign every day. Eld Inlet was named by the Wilkes Expedition in 1841. The Wilkes Expedition and a freeway sign. How can you compete with a resume like that?

Here’s the place names entry for Mud Bay–Lopez Island:

Mud Bay is at the south end of Lopez Sound on Lopez Island, in southeast San Juan County. It was named because it is shoal and offers poor anchorage.

Mud Bay–Lopez Island is large, about a mile long by a half-mile wide. It also provides the name for a local road and is well known by boaters. Lopez Island isn’t remote. It’s the third largest island in the San Juans and has regular ferry service. But with its limited accessibility, there’s no way Mud Bay–Lopez Island can top Mud Bay–Eld Inlet in terms of name recognition. Thus, it comes in as number 2.

That leaves my Mud Bay in a distant third place. It shows up on local maps and might be the only Mud Bay with its own blog. :) But no local roads or businesses are named for it and it apparently lacks the size or importance to be one of the roughly 8000 entries in the place names database. Clearly some PR work will be needed if there’s going to be a Big Three.

Note: When the tide goes out, our mud is just as good as the mud in the Big Two.