Stuart Island Marine State Park History

Stuart Island Marine State Park is a favorite boating destination with an interesting convergence of personal histories.

Sediments and Folds

The rocks that make up Stuart Island are made of siltstone and sandstone that formed from sediments deposited by river deltas and massive underwater landslides on the sea floor about 75 million years ago, at a location hundreds of miles south of today’s Stuart Island. Geologists call this formation the Nanaimo Group.

The forces of plate tectonics, driving the spreading and subduction of Earth’s crustal plates, eventually brought the Nanaimo Group to its present location in today’s northwest Washington and neighboring British Columbia. Later stress placed on the rocks by the subduction of oceanic crust underneath North America folded the rocks into a series of parallel ridges that run perpendicular to the force of the stress—kind of like kicking a rug creates ridges in the fabric.

Continuing compression tilted the folded layers of rock toward the southeast. Over many years of erosion, the hardest parts of the formations formed resistant ridges while softer siltstones and shales were carried away, leaving the seawater-filled inlets of Reid and Prevost Harbors, to the delight of today’s park visitors.

Indigenous Lands

Stuart Island Marine State Park lies within the traditional territory of Coast Salish Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Lummi Nation, Samish Indian Nation, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Suquamish Tribe, and First Nations in present-day Canada.

For thousands of years, the lands and waters of the San Juan Archipelago have provided habitat for a diverse community of life that forms the basis of their cultures. As winter days lengthen into spring, herring and herring roe collect in the eelgrass beds near shore. A little later, spring Chinook salmon pass through the island channels. Early summer brings sockeye salmon, harvested for millennia with reef nets.

The waters around Stuart Island were especially significant locations for the placement of reef nets. Reef nets were devised thousands of years ago by Coast Salish fishers as a means to harvest summertime runs of sockeye salmon returning through the San Juan Archipelago to their spawning grounds in the Fraser River watershed. The reef net gear consists of a pair of canoes with bag-like nets suspended between the two vessels, facing into the saltwater current at a site where rocky “reefs” forced fish to swim into the nets. Traditional willow-bark nets were anchored in place with 200–400-pound stones. Reef-net sites were owned by individuals and ownership was commonly passed down by inheritance.

US Ex Ex

The US Congress authorized an exploring and surveying expedition by US military personnel to map and gather scientific information about the Antarctic and Australian continents, the Pacific Ocean and the Pacific Northwest in 1836, the first such project by the US government. The US Exploring Expedition (or US Ex Ex) set sail from Hampton Roads, Virginia on August 18, 1838, and explored much of today’s state of Washington, by sea and overland to the area of today’s eastern Washington, during the summer of 1841, before returning to New York by completing a circumnavigation of the globe on June 10, 1842.

The present-day name for Stuart Island was coined by expedition Commander Charles Wilkes. The island was named for Frederick D. Stuart, who served as the captain’s clerk on the expedition.

The Pig War

Dual claims to the Pacific Northwest region by the US and Britain were negotiated in 1846, setting the land boundary at 49° north latitude, but the status of the San Juan Archipelago remained disputed, as British and American authorities disagreed over the placement of the maritime border between Vancouver Island and the mainland.

On June 15, 1859, Lyman Cutlar, an American farmer claiming land on San Juan Island under terms of the Donation Land Claim Act, shot a pig owned by an employee of the British Hudson’s Bay Company. Cutlar’s offer of restitution was spurned and British authorities threatened to arrest Cutlar. American settlers asked for US military protection. Captain George Pickett (of later infamy for his role as a Confederate officer) and 66 soldiers of the 9th Infantry Regiment responded from Fort Bellingham, establishing a camp at the south end of the island. Additional US troops were transferred from Fort Townsend.

The British sent three ships under the command of Captain Geoffrey Hornby in response, building fortifications on the north end of the island with orders from James Douglas, the governor of the Vancouver Island colony, to remove the Americans from the island. Hornby refused the order, waiting for instructions from Rear Admiral Robert Baynes. Baynes countermanded the order, saying he would not escalate the conflict into war “over a squabble about a pig.”

US negotiators likewise desired to de-escalate the situation, as their focus shifted to the early stages of the US Civil War. Negotiations resulted in a joint occupancy agreement, with forces reduced to no more than 100 personnel, who enjoyed amicable social relations for the duration of the occupation.

In 1871, the Treaty of Washington between the US and Great Britain mandated the submission of the competing claims for adjudication by a commission appointed by German Kaiser Wilhelm I. On October 21, 1872, the commission decided in favor of the American claim. The British Royal Marines withdrew on November 25, 1872, and the American troops had all returned to Fort Townsend by July 1874.

Land Disposal

Local tribes had ceded ownership of the area to the US federal government under duress in the Treaty of Point Elliot in 1855, in spite of the fact that colonial administration of the San Juan Archipelago was not yet settled. In the treaty, Indigenous residents kept rights to harvest natural resources in their usual and accustomed places throughout the islands, especially at reef net sites owned by tribal members. Many continued to live in their homes as their ancestors had for thousands of years rather than relocate to reservations as stipulated in the treaty.

The US Government Survey of Stuart Island was completed in 1875, opening the way for private ownership of the public domain lands. Some of the first land claimants were former British and American soldiers stationed on San Juan Island during the Pig War.

A Pig War Soldier’s Story (American)

Christopher Rosler, an immigrant to the United States from Germany, enlisted in the US Army for the expressed purpose of getting a chance to go to the western territories. His wish was granted when he was assigned to the 9th Infantry Regiment, ultimately accompanying Captain Pickett to San Juan Island. Upon his discharge in 1862, he married a local Indigenous woman, Anna Pike (Metlakatla Tsimshian). The couple had a family of eight children, including daughter Kate, born in 1868.

Kate married Bernard Mordhorst, a German immigrant to the United States, and the first colonist to apply for a land claim under the terms of the Homestead Act on Stuart Island, in 1876. The Mordhorsts made a living fishing for herring to supplement subsistence farming on their claim which was “proved up” and patented in 1883 after meeting the law’s requirements to develop agriculture, build a home and live on the property for at least five years. Bernard and Kate had six children, including a daughter, Adeline (born 1894) and a son, Barney (born 1901). The Stuart Island property was inherited by Barney Mordhorst in 1937, after Bernard’s death.

A Pig War Soldier’s Story (British)

Robert Smith, a British Royal Marine serving on San Juan Island, bought his discharge from service for $25 in 1869, to marry Lucy Jack (Swinomish/Saanich). They had a daughter, Mary T. Smith, born in 1878. Mary was largely raised by her grandmother, Nu-Wask-Lak (Swinomish), and ultimately inherited ownership of the reef net site in Reid Harbor. Her descendants related the story of her marriage to Edward (Ed) A. Chevalier, the son of a Swiss immigrant to the United States:

"One day Ed was rowing to Stuart Island and met Nu-Wask-Lak and her beautiful granddaughter, Mary Smith, on the shore of Spieden Island, where Mary sat while her grandmother combed her hair. A romance developed into a genuine island love story. They had six children and spent 45 years on Spieden Island. They logged and fished and raised turkeys and apples and were known as the “King and Queen of Spieden.” –Karen Jones-Lamb, Native American Wives of San Juan Settlers, 1994

One of the Chevalier’s children, Alfred R. Chevalier (born 1897), married Adeline Mordhorst, Barney’s sister, in 1924, uniting two families that had roots on both sides of the Pig War, as well as deep Indigenous roots to the lands and waters of the San Juan Archipelago.

Making a Park

Recreational Boating on the Salish Sea grew dramatically in the years after the end of World War II, prompting the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSPRC) to search for appropriate locations for marine recreation sites that could accommodate boat moorages. The protected waters of Reid and Prevost Harbors are separated by the scenic rib of resistant Nanaimo Group rocks in the middle of Stuart Island, providing an ideal combination of marine and island features for boaters.

The WSPRC purchased 93 acres on Stuart Island, with shoreline on both Reid and Prevost Harbors, from Barney and Mary Mordhorst on June 13, 1952. Park developments have enhanced recreational opportunities with docks and mooring buoys, as well as island campsites and trails.