San Juan Island
| San Juan Island | ||
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| Waters | Juan de Fuca Strait ( Pacific Ocean ) | |
| Archipelago | San Juan Islands | |
| Geographical location | 48 ° 32 ′ N , 123 ° 5 ′ W | |
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| surface | 142.59 km² | |
| Residents | 6822 (2000) 48 inhabitants / km² |
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| main place | Friday Harbor | |
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With a land area of 149.59 km², San Juan Island is the second largest island in the San Juan Islands after Orcas Island , a group of islands at the entrance to Puget Sound in Washington State .
The population was given in the 2000 census as 6822. The largest settlement with about 2000 inhabitants is Friday Harbor . The place is also the seat of the municipal administration. The major marine research institute of Friday Harbor Laboratories is based here, as is the environmental protection organization Sea Shepherd Conservation Society . In Friday Harbor there is a berth for the ferries to the American mainland, which is served by the ships of Washington State Ferries . In the north of the island, in Roche Harbor , there is a small airfield.
Four large inland lakes (Trout Lake, Sportsman Lake, Zylstra Lake, Briggs Pond) with a total area of about 900,000 m² are distributed over the island.
Tourism plays an important role (e.g. whale watching, motor boating and kayaking ). Plant and animal identification paths as well as reconstructed buildings, ornamental gardens and the like show the lifestyle of the region and the history of European immigrants. In the high season, costume parties with historical clothing take place. There are also many farms here.
The local newspapers Journal of the San Juans , The Island's Sounder and The Island's Weekly appear in San Juan .
history
Before the arrival of the first Europeans, the islands were part of the coastal Salish settlement area . They migrated in the wake of the seasons within their respective areas, so they only inhabited their villages during the cold season. The Lummi settled on the islands and laid reef nets on islands such as Orcas Island, Lummi Island and Fidalgo Island , but also on San Juan Island. There are two archaeological sites on San Juan Island, namely Cattle Point and English Camp (sometimes called British Camp). Cattle Point was already excavated in 1946/47, and a second excavation took place in 1948. In 1950, student training excavations took place at the second site, but one excavation did not take place until 1970 to 1972, and another followed from 1983 to 1991. The oldest finds at Cattle Point date back to the Cascade phase , which was between 7500 and 2500 BC . Includes. Around 3000 BC The post-glacial sea level stabilized so that artefacts from this period do not have to be salvaged by underwater archaeologists. Cattle Point was therefore not on the coast and was therefore not used permanently, but only visited temporarily. This earliest phase was followed by the St. Mungo, Mayne and Locarno Beach phases, in which numerous shells and fish bones are marked, dating from 1974 to around 500 to 300 BC. Could be dated. Other tools also appear, such as stone projectile points. These laterally notched tips were replaced in a long process by triangular or lancet-shaped ones. They were part of the bow and arrow. The giant trees of life, which are so characteristic of the temperate rainforest in the region, did not appear until 2000 BC. This is likely to have changed the culture fundamentally, because it was only these trees that allowed the construction of the striking plank houses, a process that took around 1500 years to complete. During this Marpole phase (500 BC to 500 AD) the characteristics of the local coastal Salish culture emerged. In the subsequent San Juan phase (around 500 to 900), tools for woodworking and wood tools became predominant. In addition to marine animals, berries played an important role, especially in winter, for which extensive supplies were made. Salmon fishing seems to have started relatively late and is considerably more difficult in the sea than in the rivers. For this purpose, reef nets were used, which intercepted the fish on the spawning migration via a complicated safety system using second canoes.
The first contact with Europeans led to smallpox epidemics on the mainland from the late 1770s . In the decades that followed, fleeing smallpox and looting tribes, they migrated from British Columbia to the neighboring mainland. Other tribes, such as the Swallah , who may have lived on the east side of the island, disappeared. Numerous other tribes headed for fishing in their ocean-going canoes, such as the Songhees , who lived in what is now Victoria , the provincial capital.
The name of the island goes back to an expedition of the Spanish captain Francisco de Eliza , who called the entire archipelago "Isla y Archipelago de San Juan". One of his officers, Gonzalo López de Haro, was the first European to set foot on San Juan Island. The Haro Strait , which separates San Juan Island from Vancouver Island, is named after him.
The American explorer Charles Wilkes named the island "Rodgers Island" in 1841, but the name did not catch on. Since the San Juan Islands were claimed by the British, the patriotic American names that Wilkes had given disappeared in favor of the original Spanish names, with a few exceptions. The Hudson's Bay Company established a farm here called Belle Vue at what would later become the American Camp, a place the British called Cattle Point, the Lummi Who-shung-ing.
In the Oregon Compromise of 1846, which made the 49th parallel the border between the US and British territory, the affiliation of the San Juan Islands was not clarified. In 1859 this led to the so-called pig conflict over the course of the border in the area of the archipelago. A (British) pig shot by an American was the only victim of the conflict. The border dispute was finally settled in 1872 after Kaiser Wilhelm I had been asked to mediate.
After this conflict, San Juan Island is also known as the “Pig War Island” (Eng. “Pig War Island”). British and US military camps from this period still exist, each located on the other ends of the island (San Juan National Historical Park ). Here the " pig conflict " is remembered.
In 1873 Friday Harbor became the seat of the county.
In June 1904 the first field studies took place under the direction of Professors Trevor Kincaid (zoology, 1872-1970) and Theodore C. Frye (botany). These informal meetings resulted in the creation of Friday Harbor Laboratories (FHL), part of the University of Washington .
In 1919 the first lighthouse was the Lime Kiln Light Station on Dead Man's Bay in the west. In 1935 the Cattle Point Lighthouse followed in the Cattle Point Interpretive Area near American Camp, in the southeast of the island. In addition to two other lighthouses on Patos and Stuart Island, they should make the dangerous island stretch between Juan de Fuca Strait and Puget Sound safer. As early as 1888, a simple beacon was built at Cattle Point that was guarded by the soldier George Jakle.
literature
- Julie K. Stein: Exploring Coast Salish Prehistory. The Archeology of San Juan Island , University of Washington Press, 2000. ISBN 9780295979571
Web links
- San Juan Island Chamber of Commerce (English)
- www.gonorthwest.com article
- Kit Oldham: San Juan County - Thumbnail History , historyLink.org 2005
Remarks
- ↑ Stein, p. 18.
- ↑ Stein, p. 20.
- ↑ Phillips, James W. (1971). Washington State Place Names. University of Washington Press. ISBN 0-295-95158-3
- ↑ Kit Oldham: University of Washington's first marine sciences summer session, forerunner of Friday Harbor Laboratories, begins in June 1904 , October 12, 2005
- ^ Daryl C. McClary: Lime Kiln and Cattle Point Lighthouses (San Juan Island) , March 25, 2006