From San Juan County Environmental Stewardship Department San Juan County’s Environmental Stewardship Department wants to hear and share your fishing stories. We are collaborating with an organization called Salmon Nation that recognizes the fight for wild salmon is about much more than fish — it’s about culture, livelihoods and the viability of our natural and  Continue Reading

“Island Senior” is a regular column on the San Juan Update written by Peggy Sue McRae. When I refer to myself as a hippy, I am not bragging. It is aspirational. To this day I aspire to live up to the promise of my love beads and peace signs.  That is why it caught my  Continue Reading

From the San Juan Historical Society and Museum Father’s Day this year will be on June 20. When thinking about a historical photograph to go with a June history column, this four-generation portrait, seen above and shared by the Guard family, came to mind as a great example of the passage of time in a  Continue Reading

From the Town of Friday Harbor The Town of Friday Harbor presents “A Kepi in the Tide: Writing Historical Fiction” 10:30 a.m., Thursday, May 27. Author and genealogist John Ickes is a distant relative of early San Juan Island artist Marjorie Walker (1906-1992). His historical research contributed to the understanding of Marjorie’s life and the online  Continue Reading

From the Town of Friday Harbor The Town of Friday Harbor presents the online discussion “Architecture of the Recent Past: What Park Street is Telling Us” at 5 p.m. Thursday, May 20. Recent Past architecture (1940-80) is ubiquitous, typically under-appreciated, and typically not considered historic by most observers. From modest FHA cottages and iconic Ranch  Continue Reading

By Stephanie Buffum, coordinator, San Juan Islands Stop-over Many thanks to over 300 islanders, students, and community leaders who attended May 10-11 House of Tears Carvers’ totem pole blessings on San Juan Island/Whelalq, Shaw Island/Sqemenen, Orcas Island/Swalex and Lopez Island/Swaletch. Lummi Nation members from the House of Tears Carvers Se Sealth (Jewell Praying Wolf James),  Continue Reading

Join Historian Mike Vouri and members of the Old Military Road Trail committee at 10:30 a.m., Saturday May 15 as they explore the southern starting point of the Military Road that once ran between American and English Camps. Learn how the old road was initially cut by laborers employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company to  Continue Reading

Attend eight local historical events through May   From the San Juan Historical Society and Museum The American experience is composed of many local histories, common or unique. When we say “History Lives Here,” it is to bring attention to our island community’s often somewhat hidden, or at least not broadly remembered, rich local history.  Continue Reading

From Sandy Strehlou, historic preservation coordinator, Town of Friday Harbor An online event called “There’s a Story Here: Exaggeration Postcards Imagined” will be held at 5 p.m., May 4 in celebration of History Lives Here 2021. Before Photoshop, innovative photographers used photographic manipulation to create a novel and inexpensive genre of souvenirs known as “exaggeration”  Continue Reading

By Hayley Day, San Juan Update A Lummi Nation totem pole is conducting a cross-country trip to bring awareness to protecting Indigenous people’s land and waters, reports the Associated Press.  The journey, called the Red Road to DC, starts in Bellingham in May and will end in Washington D.C. in June. According to a press  Continue Reading

From the San Juan Historical Society and Museum Before there were family vacation cabins or second homes for retirees from the mainland, there was a different kind of part-time resident on San Juan Island. They came for the lucrative fishing seasons and set up camp on westside beaches, among other places. Some of these were  Continue Reading

Contributed Photo/San Juan Historical Museum. Fishing boats in Friday Harbor. From the Town of Friday Harbor The Town of Friday Harbor is looking for a new board member to preserve history, as well as organizations to share local historical stories. Board The Town of Friday Harbor Historic Preservation Review Board is looking for a new  Continue Reading

From the San Juan Historical Society and Museum It’s Women’s History Month and the tradition of this history column is to feature a person or organization in keeping with the topic. This year, in recognition of International Women’s Day on March 8, the United Nations has chosen the theme of “Women in leadership: Achieving an  Continue Reading

Patos Lighthouse – Contributed Photo From Arcadia Publishing Since 1893, a light has been shining from Patos Island, the northernmost island in Puget Sound. Built to guide ships through treacherous waters, the lighthouse was also a happy home for many, including Edward Durgan and his family in the early 1900s. Boundary waters smugglers and rumrunners  Continue Reading

From the San Juan Historical Society and Museum In the month she turned 19, Deborah Julia Kelly and her sweetheart Elijah Hamlin Nash traveled by steamship from San Juan Island to Seattle and took out a marriage license on Valentine’s Day 1896. They were married the following Sunday on Feb. 16 at Plymouth Church in  Continue Reading

From the San Juan Historical Society and Museum “We can’t build up our beautiful city by scrapping all the time.” These words were written by Launor Benjamin Carter in 1909, as seen in the ad above and published in the Friday Harbor Journal the last week in December that year. The entire ad is worth reading. It reminds us that  Continue Reading

From the San Juan Historical Society and Museum Not all of the photographs in the San Juan Historical Society and Museum collections are from the island’s pioneer days or the early days of Friday Harbor’s development as a town. The snapshot above caught our eye as a classic Christmas image from the 1950s, tinseled tree  Continue Reading

By SJIL The San Juan Island Library will host a virtual Know Your Islanders event titled “Russel Barsh: The Land We Stand On,” at 7 p.m., Monday, Dec. 7. Thousands of Indigenous peoples already lived in the San Juan Islands millennia before the Pig War, building wood villages and sail canoes, clearing fields for camas  Continue Reading

For more than four decades, the San Juan Lions have displayed a Noel sign in Friday Harbor to ring in the holidays. The sign was lit again this year on Wednesday, Nov. 25. Lion Brian Brown spoke with the Update about the sign’s creation, history and meaning. Q: Tell me a little about the sign.  Continue Reading

By SJIL Join the San Juan Island Library at 7 p.m., Veterans Day, Wednesday, Nov. 11 as we honor veterans and explore their local and familial history and legacy. The event will be online. Learn how to research your relatives’ military records with Boyd Pratt, followed by a discussion of the history of the Women’s  Continue Reading

By San Juan Historical Society and Museum Sometimes researching local history is about documenting popular stories, and sometimes it’s about correcting what has been recorded in the past about those stories. Each step along the way, we at the San Juan Historical Society and Museum are grateful for so many people and resources which make  Continue Reading

Thanks to the cooperation of the Land Bank and the San Juan Preservation Trust we now have a beautiful new and historic public land to explore. On September 26th, National Public Lands Day, 5 years of negotiations and planning came to fruition when the 285-acre Zylstra Lake Preserve on San Juan Island officially opened part  Continue Reading