San Juan Islands

In 1859 an American farmer on San Juan Island shot a pig belonging to the British Hudson's Bay Company, and the two empires nearly went to war. The so-called Pig War ended without another shot. British and American troops shared the island for 12 years until arbitration by Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm I placed the boundary in Haro Strait in 1872, making the islands American. The archipelago sits in the Salish Sea between mainland Washington and Vancouver Island, with more than 400 islands and rocks at high tide, 128 of them named, and about 174 square miles (450 km²) of land.

Coast Salish peoples, including the Lummi and Samish, fished and lived here for thousands of years. The islands lie in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains and receive far less rain than Seattle, 65 miles (105 km) south. Washington State Ferries link Orcas, San Juan, Lopez and Shaw islands to Anacortes. Mount Constitution on Orcas rises to 2,407 feet (734 m), and orcas, including the endangered Southern Residents, hunt salmon in the surrounding channels. The San Juan Islands National Monument, created in 2013, protects scattered public lands, and 17,788 people lived in San Juan County in 2020.

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