Coupeville is a small waterfront town on central Whidbey Island, in Puget Sound, and the county seat of Island County. With a population of about 1,900, it is the quieter, more historic counterpart to Oak Harbor, the island's largest city. The town faces Penn Cove, a sheltered inlet long associated with shellfish and, in the modern era, with some of the most celebrated mussels in the Pacific Northwest. Its location at the edge of Puget Sound and its intact 19th-century streetscape give Coupeville a character unlike almost anywhere else in the state. The town's most important designation is its place within Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve, established in 1978 to protect a cultural landscape of still-working farms, prairie, and shoreline settled in the 1850s under the Donation Land Claim Act. Coupeville — one of Washington's oldest towns — is included within the reserve, which also encompasses Fort Casey and Fort Ebey state parks and the surrounding farmland near Penn Cove. This means the town's history is not confined to a museum district; it is written into the working farms and open fields that surround it. Daily life in Coupeville is unhurried and community-centered. The Coupeville School District, which serves roughly 1,000 students across the central part of the island, keeps its elementary, middle, and high schools within the town, reinforcing its role as a civic center. The downtown waterfront district hosts shops, restaurants, and the island's ferry-adjacent amenities, and the town is a focal point for island-wide events. Recreation flows from the setting: beach access along Penn Cove, the bluffs and trails of Ebey's Landing, and the two state parks at either end of the reserve provide hiking, birding, and water access. The annual Penn Cove Musselfest each March celebrates the local shellfish industry with tastings, farm tours, and chowder competitions. For those who value history, open space, and a small-town waterfront lifestyle, Coupeville is one of the defining communities of Whidbey Island.