The irony of seeing their son aboard a combine cutting through a field of barley wasn’t lost on Central Whidbey farmers Karen and Wilbur Bishop last Thursday.

The Bishops were part of a crowd of about 80 people who gathered on the hill overlooking Ebey’s Prairie to take part in a centennial celebration for the National Park Service.

But it was really more than that.

Three new interpretive panels were unveiled, telling the story of a decades-long fight to preserve the historic farmscape in this part of Coupeville, leading to the creation of Ebey’s Landing National Historical Reserve in 1978 — the first historic reserve in the country.

In the moments after the ceremony, Karen Bishop and her husband stared at the landscape below and could see their son, Clark, harvesting grain on a portion of the prairie near the landing that had been pegged for development 39 years ago.

At the most fitting time, he was continuing a way of life that had been protected, as one of the signs pointed out, after “years of litigation, contentious council meetings and exhausting public discussions.”

“He’s sixth generation,” Karen Bishop said. “He’s committed to farming as his career.

“He’s an economist by education and he was in the Peace Corps, working with agriculture in Moldova. He started realizing there’s too much here and ‘What’s going to happen if there’s not another generation?’”

With temperatures in the 80s, the weather cooperated for the occasion, which was the latest in a series of events the reserve has put on in recent months to call attention to the National Park Service’s special anniversary.

The reserve also opened the newly created Pratt Loop Trail, a section that now connects the commonly-used Kettles Trails system to the popular Bluff Trail.

The Pratt Loop Trail is located near the reserve office at the end of Cemetery Road, next to Sunnyside Cemetery.

Roy Zipp, operations manager for the National Park Service at Ebey’s Landing National Historical Reserve, told the gathering not to walk away thinking about the birthday of an organization, but instead to think about the 100-year anniversary of an idea.

“The National Park Service is just the federal agency that helps promote this idea,” Zipp said. “The idea is that we have chosen as an American society to set aside some of the most beautiful places in our country and to preserve the authenticity of America. The reserve is a really fascinating notion of what that means.”

He pointed to Mount Rainier, calling it the older, traditional style of national parks in which the federal government, acting through the National Park Service, has exclusive jurisdiction.

“There’s no private land,” Zipp said. “You enter through a gate and you’re in an exclusively federal enclave. This place is fundamentally different by design. The National Park Service owns 413 acres in this 17,400-acre reserve. The vast majority of it is private.

“We are a federal, state and local partnership because the majority of the reserve is private land, and in order to protect this magnificent cultural landscape, we need private citizens working together like they did to establish this beautiful place to keep it protected.”

Kristen Griffin, the reserve manager, said despite the spectacular scenery, said she considers that partnership the reserve’s most beautiful part of all.

“That partnership that came to be in 1978 when the reserve was established is a commitment and a belief that people and government can work together to preserve what is essential, what must survive, what must continue and be handed on to the next generation,” Griffin said. “To me, it feels like a great big hug of caring and looking to the future.”