San Juan Islands
The San Juan Islands are part of an archipelago in the Pacific Northwest of the United States between the U.S. state of Washington and Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. The San Juan Islands are part of Washington state, and form the core of San Juan County.
In the archipelago, four islands are accessible to vehicular and foot traffic via the Washington State Ferries system.
History
The Gulf of Georgia Culture Area encompasses the San Juan and Gulf Islands, which share many archaeological similarities. These islands were home to various Coast Salish peoples, including the Nooksack and Northern Straits groups. European exploration in the area introduced smallpox in the 1770s.The Spanish explorer Francisco de Eliza named the San Juan Islands Isla y Archipiélago de San Juan in 1791 while sailing under the authority of Juan Vicente de Güemes Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo, 2nd Count of Revillagigedo, the Viceroy of Mexico. Eliza named several places for the Viceroy, including Orcas Island and Guemes Island. San Juan Island's first European discoverer was Gonzalo López de Haro, one of Eliza's officers, for whom Haro Strait is named. The Spanish had previously encountered the islands during Manuel Quimper's exploring voyage on the Princesa Real in 1790, but they were not recognized as islands until Eliza's expedition. José María Narváez, one of Eliza's pilots, also helped explore the San Juans in 1791 and became the first European to explore the Strait of Georgia.
The Vancouver Expedition, led by George Vancouver, explored the area in 1792 while a Spanish expedition led by Dionisio Alcalá Galiano and Cayetano Valdés y Flores was also exploring. The British and Spanish ships met and cooperated in exploring the north. Vancouver encountered other Spanish ships and traded information, so he was aware of the names given by the Spanish expedition and kept them, although he renamed some features, such as the Strait of Georgia.
The United States Exploring Expedition, led by Charles Wilkes, explored the region in 1841. Wilkes named many coastal features after American heroes of the War of 1812 or members of his crew, possibly unaware of the already existing Spanish names and charts.
Henry Kellett led a project in 1847 to reorganize the official charts of the region for the British Admiralty. The project only applied to British territory, which at the time included the San Juan Islands but not Puget Sound. Kellett removed most of the names given by Wilkes and kept British and Spanish names, sometimes moving Spanish names to replace those given by Wilkes. As a result, Wilkes' names are common in Puget Sound and Spanish names are rare, while the opposite is true for the San Juan and Gulf Islands. Wilkes had named the San Juan Islands the Navy Archipelago and individual islands after U.S. naval officers, such as Rodgers Island for San Juan Island, "Chauncey" for Lopez Island, and Hull Island for Orcas Island. Some of Wilkes' names, such as Shaw, Decatur, Jones, Blakely, and Sinclair, named after American naval officers, survived Kellett's editing.
Border dispute
In 1843, the Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Victoria on Vancouver Island. The 1846 Oregon Treaty established the 49th parallel as the border between Canada and the U.S., with Vancouver Island remaining British. The treaty did not specify which channel the border should follow between the Strait of Georgia and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, leading to a boundary dispute. In 1852, the Territory of Oregon created Island County, including the San Juan Islands. In 1853, Island County became part of the Washington Territory, which created Whatcom County out of parts of Island County in 1854. The San Juan Islands were finally split off into present-day San Juan County in 1873.In 1855, Washington Territory levied a property tax on properties of the Hudson's Bay Company on San Juan Island, which the HBC refused to pay. This led to a dispute with the Colony of Vancouver Island over the ownership of the San Juan Islands, with the U.S. claiming Haro Strait as the border and Britain claiming Rosario Strait. The resulting Pig War and San Juan Dispute were a diplomatic stalemate until the boundary issue was placed in the hands of Emperor Wilhelm I of Germany for arbitration in 1871. The border through Haro Strait was established in 1872.
Post-border dispute
The surrounding bodies of water, including Puget Sound and the Straits of Georgia and Juan de Fuca, were recognized collectively as the Salish Sea, by the United States in 2009 and by Canada in 2010.On June 7, 2024, a T-34 plane flown by former astronaut and air force pilot, Bill Anders, crashed on the San Juan Islands. Anders did not survive the crash.
Ecology
The islands were heavily logged in the nineteenth century, but now have an extensive second-growth coast Douglas fir, Pacific madrone, red alder and bigleaf maple forest. There are small strands of old-growth Douglas fir and western redcedar, mostly within long standing privately held property. In the highlands one also finds grand fir, western hemlock and other subalpine trees.The San Juan Islands host the greatest concentration of bald eagles in the contiguous United States. Great blue herons, black oystercatchers, and numerous shorebirds are found along the shore and in winter, the islands are home to trumpeter swans, Canada geese and other waterfowl. Peregrine falcons, northern harriers, barred owls and other birds of prey are found. In addition diving birds such as rhinoceros auklets, pigeon guillemots and endangered marbled murrelets frequent the surrounding seas. Western bluebirds, which were eliminated from the islands 50 years ago because of competition for nesting sites by non-native European starlings, were recently restored to San Juan Island thanks to the efforts of volunteers and conservation organizations.
The islands are famous for their resident pods of orcas. There are three resident pods that eat salmon, but also some transient orcas that come to take harbor seals. Other marine mammals include river otters, Steller sea lions, common minke whales, Dall's porpoises and other cetaceans.
Columbia black-tailed deer are the largest mammals on the San Juan Islands, which are unusual in their historic absence of large carnivores, except for wolves which were extirpated in the 1860s. Dr. Caleb B. R. Kennerly, surgeon and naturalist, collected a wolf specimen on Lopez Island, which is now in the National Museum of Natural History, probably during the Northwest Boundary Survey from 1857 to 1861. Also, there is a specimen of elk in the Slater Museum of Natural History at the University of Puget Sound that was collected on Orcas Island, and old-timers report finding elk antlers on both Lopez and Orcas Islands.
Before 1850, most of the freshwater on the islands was held in beaver ponds, although the aquatic mammal was extirpated by Hudson's Bay Company fur stations at Fort Langley and San Juan Island. Remnants of beaver dams number in the hundreds across the archipelago. Gnawed stumps and beaver sign are now seen on Orcas and other islands, and recolonization by this keystone species is likely to lead to increased abundance and diversity of birds, amphibians, reptiles and plants. In spring 2011 a pair of beaver appeared at Killebrew Lake on Orcas Island, but were killed to avoid flooding a phone company switch box buried under Dolphin Bay Road. These beaver likely swam from the mainland and could have recolonized the islands.
Northern sea otter remains are documented on Sucia Island in the San Juan Islands archipelago. In 1790, Spanish explorer Manuel Quimper traded copper sheets for sea otter pelts at Discovery Bay, for live sea otters captured north of the bay in the "interior" of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Although historical records of sea otter in the San Juan Islands are sparse, there is a sea otter specimen collected in 1897 in the "Strait of Fuca" in the National Museum of Natural History. When the sea otter finally received federal protection in 1911, Washington's sea otter had been hunted to extinction, and although a small remnant population still existed in British Columbia, it soon died out. Fifty-nine sea otters were re-introduced to the Washington coast from Amchitka Island, Alaska, in the summers of 1969 and 1970, and these have expanded by 8% per year, mainly along the outer west and northwest coast of the Olympic Peninsula. Professional marine mammal biologists verified a single sea otter observed near Cattle Point, San Juan Island, in October 1996. Although the historical numbers of sea otter in the San Juan Islands is not known, the habitat for them may have once been ideal.
In the 1890s non-native European rabbits, an exotic invasive species, began to infest the islands as the result of the release of domestic rabbits on Smith Island. Rabbits from the San Juan Islands were used later for several introductions of European rabbits into other, usually Midwestern, states. The rabbits are pursued by Eurasian red fox, another non-native species introduced intermittently through the twentieth century.
On the islands is the San Juan Islands National Monument with 75 sections.
Geography
The United States Geological Survey defines the San Juan Islands as the archipelago north of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, west of Rosario Strait, east of Haro Strait, and south of Boundary Pass. To the north lie the open waters of the Strait of Georgia. All these waters are within the Salish Sea. The USGS definition of the San Juan archipelago coincides with San Juan County. Islands not in San Juan County are not part of the San Juan Islands, according to the USGS. NOAA notes that, while geopolitically divided, the San Juan Islands and Canadian Gulf Islands geologically form part of a larger Gulf Archipelago.At mean high tide, the San Juan Islands comprise over 400 islands and rocks, 128 of which are named, and over of shoreline.
The majority of the San Juan Islands are quite hilly, with some flat areas and valleys in between, often quite fertile. The tallest peak is Mount Constitution, on Orcas Island, at an elevation of. The coastlines are a mix of sandy and rocky beaches, shallow inlets and deep harbors, placid coves and reef-studded bays. Gnarled, ochre-colored madrona trees grace much of the shorelines, while evergreen fir and pine forests cover large inland areas.
The San Juan Islands get substantially less rainfall than Seattle, about to the south, due to their location in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains to the southwest. Summertime high temperatures are around, while average wintertime lows are in the high 30s and low 40s Fahrenheit. Snow is infrequent in winter, except for the higher elevations, but the islands are subject to high winds at times; those from the northeast sometimes bring brief periods of freezing.