For some, Ebey’s Landing National Historical Reserve is a place to escape to from the big city or the bustle of life. For others, it’s a place to own property and make a livelihood.

The question that the Ebey’s Landing Trust Board is aiming to answer in the coming months is: What exactly is a reserve?

Unique among properties that are protected under the umbrella of the National Park Service, the reserve is not a park and it’s not simply a grouping of private and public property. It’s a hybrid.

“It’s a whole different animal,” said Fran Einterz, who has been farming on the reserve for 15 years and serves on the Ebey’s Landing Trust Board. “It can be really confusing.”

How the reserve’s purpose and uses shake down in practical terms, both for the land owners and the public, will be discovered in an ongoing discussion that is happening among trust board members and its Communications Committee.

One main reason the purpose of the reserve gets confused is partly due to the language that has been used, said Kristen Griffin, who has been serving as the reserve’s manager for nearly a year now.

“It gets referred to as a park,” Griffin said. “A park has a lot of expectation that comes with it. If people think park, they think, ‘This is here for my usage.’ The communication has not been consistent.”

The not-so-urban legend that gets told over and over is about the wedding party who wanders onto a farmer’s private property to take pictures because they believe the reserve is a park and open to the public.

While farmers say this happens from time to time, Griffin said the issue is broader than that.

Visitors and tourists with dogs, or those who wish to hunt, or even camp can overstep the rights of the private property owners within the reserve.

“When people have the wrong idea, it’s going to perpetuate the wrong ideas about where to go and how to behave,” Griffin said.

On the other hand, the reserve is meant to be enjoyed, and the trust board is looking to the surrounding community for input.

“To be a success, we need support from the community and our stakeholders. … We need to work together to protect the reserve,” Griffin said.

Longtime reserve farmer Wilbur Bishop, who also serves on the trust board, said that his life would be very different if that legislation had not been adopted back in 1984.

“If the reserve hadn’t been established, I wouldn’t have spent a career here,” Bishop said. “The reserve is a heck of a good thing. … It has been extremely successful.”

Bishop said the reserve and its protections are as unique as the makeup of its property owners and residents who pressed for the legislation 30 years ago.

Unlike other National Park Service areas, the reserve was intended to preserve and protect this specific agricultural community, Bishop said.

“It was made here by local politicians and the local community,” Bishop said. “It’s a unique place.”

For that reason, Bishop said he’s hoping the Communication Committee can come up with ways to “respect that original legislation” in the reserve’s message.

Einterz said he believes that the reserve needs to change with the times as needed but still remain true to it’s historic roots.

To accomplish that, the community as a whole needs to be engaged in an ongoing discussion about the reserve and its mission.

“That’s our job (as a trust board), to get that message out,” Einterz said. “On a regular basis, to get that information out to the public.”