Early settler stories tell of large Indian settlements; including burial sites and huge “middens.” Indians would leave the shell castings in piles, and over 100 years these mounds would get quite large, over thousands of years, they were 1000s of feet long, attaining heights of 20 feet. To the north, in British Columbia, maritime shell midden sites 
date to at least 10,000 years ago. In Oregon, similar sites are known to date to 8,000 years ago. The largest of our local middens and most likely the largest Swinomish Indian village, albeit 4 miles away (in Skagit County) and close to the sister FLC Church, Milltown Lutheran (no longer in existence, only its cemetery remains). It is located along the Franklin Road – Fisher Creek Watershed (not Church Creek). The Campus sits back on the plateau above this flood plain. For these tidal flats, dikes were built. On the plateaus above sea level, farmers logged and drained the lands, ditched the creeks, and used those ditches as fences, borders, and buffers. “Flat,” flat bogs, ponds, and lakes (peat bottoms) were favored, never mindful of the 1,000s of years’ of historical prior use. The soil was acidic. This writer’s father told of his brothers hauling wagon loads of shells to their parents’ farm to be ground and spread onto the soil. Seashells are composed of calcium carbonate, what today we call “lime” and were used to sweeten the soil for various vegetables requiring a more normal ph.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature
https://suddenoaklifeorg.wordpress.com/2016/09/11/shell-midden-and-tree-health-hypothesis-confirmed-in-pacific-northwest-forests/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/109423465931934315/ http://npshistory.com/publications/olym/prehistory_ethnography/chap3.htm https://www.pc.gc.ca/apps/dfhd/page_nhs_eng.aspx?id=81
https://www.instagram.com/p/CzKNRMJStHz/
Most of the Pacific West Coast middens were ground up and used for:
fertilizer
animal feed
pesticide for mosquitos
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