Port Gamble S'Klallam, Jamestown S'Klallam and Lower Elwha Klallam members tell of Tribal Gatherings, ceremonies, and ancestral canoe burials, as well as regular trapping, hunting, and fishing endeavors going back far beyond the first documented visits made by European explorers to Point Hannon in the 1790s, and continuing to the present day.
At peaks in logging and wartime military activity, Whiskey Spit has functioned as billet, brothel, speakeasy, and casino.
With its sand dollar colony, moon snails, food sources for threatened salmon, and sea lion, harbor seal, gray whale, orca whale, harbor porpoise, bottlenose dolphin, muskrat, and river otter visitors, the spit is one of Washington's most special protected shorelines.
The delicate freshwater marsh on the point provides the unique habitat requirements for the unusually wide range of nesting shore birds, migrating waterfowl, reptiles and amphibians, prey for the osprey, eagle, heron, and raven populations, and the essential foods for the plentiful sand lance and surf smelt.
A water access primitive campground was planned for state park land on Point Hannon, but the Friends of Point Hannon, North Olympic Salmon Coalition, Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team, Admiralty Audubon, Washington State Audubon Society, supporters of the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, and Northwest Water Resources oppose the conditional use permit and oppose exemption under the Jefferson County Shoreline Master Program.