Archives West Finding Aid

Cooperative association on Whidbey Island, Washington.

Freeland Colony was founded by dissatisfied colonists from Equality, a colony of the Brotherhood of Co-operative Commonwealth, who left during 1900-1901. They joined together to create a less formally organized experience on Whidbey Island at Holmes Harbor on the eastern shore, called Free Land. Fidelity Trust Company, a Seattle land speculation firm, assissted the establishment of the colony. Seattle entrepreneur, James P. Gleason, was behind movement; his agent was George Washington Daniels. In 1899, Daniels, Henry L. Stevens and Henry A. White organized the Free Land Association incorporated in Island County on January 12, 1900. It was based on communitarian ideals, but with limited objectives to the operation of the store which followed the Rochdale plan. There wasn't a clear conclusion to the colony. It was more like a "gathering of like minded radicals who sought to retain a socialist entity...". It evolved into a Rochdale community and then gradually into a permanent settlement of socialists on an isolated arm of Puget Sound.

From LeWarne, Charles Pierce, "Utopias on Puget Sound, 1885-1915," Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1975.