The final moment was perhaps the sweetest.

After 40 minutes of speeches by some of the region’s top political and conservation leaders, Amy Carey held up a bottle of glue, turned to the audience and said, “You’re the glue.” Then she and Sharon Nelson took a large piece out of 3-D model of Maury Island — meant to represent what would have been lost — and, to thunderous applause and much laughter, glued the Island back together again.

It was political theater at its best — and a remarkable highlight to the kind of evening this Island hasn’t seen in a long time.

More than 600 people turned out for a celebration at Open Space for Arts & Community marking the end of a 13-year battle to block Glacier Northwest’s effort to dramatically increase its gravel mine on the eastern flank of Maury Island.

Two weeks ago, after years of lawsuits, lobbying, protests and behind-the-scenes negotiations, the undulating 250-acre expanse became a King County park. And Saturday night, the Island partied.

JW Turner, a former president of Preserve Our Islands, the citizens group that has led the campaign, beamed as the gathering wound to a close. “It’s the party I dreamed of,” he said. “Better. The Island turned out.”

During the speeches — a few of them fiery, some poignant — both Carey, the current head of POI, and Nelson, now a state senator, recalled the early days in the battle, when Glacier announced it would start mining in 90 days. Two years later, at public hearing on the project, 2,000 Islanders turned out.

“Glacier totally misjudged our community,” Nelson said.

King County Executive Dow Constantine, who noted that he had brown hair when the campaign started, praised the stalwarts at POI for their tenacity and the Backbone Campaign for its “noisy activists.”

“You helped deliver this victory just like everyone else did,” he said.

Peter Goldmark, the state’s public lands commissioner who reversed some of the concessions his predecessor had made to Glacier, said the victory on Vashon was a significant moment for the health of Puget Sound — a “tipping point,” he said.

“Tonight is about the success of hope even in dark times,” he said. “Congratulations to all of you. It’s a great victory.”