A Friday Harbor Centennial Flashback

It’s time for this month’s his­to­ry col­umn from The San Juan His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety and Muse­um…
Click on pho­tos for larg­er image…

Could it already be ten years since islanders, present and past, came togeth­er to cel­e­brate Fri­day Harbor’s 100th birth­day? Although Fri­day Har­bor had been a well-estab­lished town since named as the Coun­ty Seat in 1873, its incor­po­ra­tion date of Feb­ru­ary 9, 1909 is rec­og­nized as its offi­cial birth­day. And so, The Town of Fri­day Har­bor host­ed and coor­di­nat­ed com­mu­ni­ty events galore for its months long Cen­ten­ni­al cel­e­bra­tion in 2009.

 

Par­tic­i­pat­ing orga­ni­za­tions includ­ed the San Juan Com­mu­ni­ty The­atre, the San Juan Island Grange, San Juan Island Library, San Juan Island Com­mu­ni­ty Foun­da­tion, and the San Juan His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety and Muse­um, to name just a few island event hosts. It was a spe­cial day when sev­er­al mem­bers of the Lum­mi Nation pad­dled over in canoes for a Cen­ten­ni­al recog­ni­tion cer­e­mo­ny over­look­ing the harbor.

 

Pic­tured here are some of our favorite pho­tos tak­en dur­ing the Cen­ten­ni­al events. The pho­to of three women and the one of three men were both tak­en at an event called “Elders Speak” in which local his­to­ri­ans inter­viewed some of the island’s most senior elders, in a casu­al con­ver­sa­tion on the sun­ny deck of the Lakedale Resort lodge.

The fif­teen women gath­ered in the last pho­to were spe­cial guests at a lun­cheon at Vinny’s Ris­torante, host­ed by Sorop­ti­mist Inter­na­tion­al of Fri­day Har­bor. Each of these spe­cial guests rep­re­sent­ed their island pio­neer fam­i­lies. In addi­tion to the fam­i­ly names you see with this pho­to, oth­er fam­i­ly names rep­re­sent­ed includ­ed Boyce, Ege­land, Firth, Guard, Kirk, Mullis, and Rosler — among many oth­ers (Read­ers, please add more fam­i­ly names in the com­ments, if you wish). Guests were delight­ed to see pho­tographs of their moth­ers, grand­moth­ers, and oth­er pio­neer rel­a­tives as fea­tured in the lun­cheon table centerpieces.

For more on the his­to­ry of Fri­day Har­bor, read Images of Amer­i­ca: Fri­day Har­bor, authored by Mike and Julia Vouri and the San Juan His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety and Muse­um. It was pub­lished for the Cen­ten­ni­al year and avail­able at the Library, His­tor­i­cal Muse­um, and local book­stores.

Hap­py Birth­day, Fri­day Har­bor — 110 years young!

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