Turn Island Marine State Park History

Turn Island Marine State Park preserves an entire island that lies just offshore from a point on the eastern side of San Juan Island.

A Rocky Island

The San Juan Islands are distinct from most of Puget Sound in that they feature shorelines with exposures of hard bedrock, rather than the bluffs of clay, sand and gravel left by Ice Age glaciers that are predominant on most of Washington’s Salish Sea, the state’s inland saltwater passages.

The rocks that make up Turn Island are part of a group of rocks that may have begun forming around a mid-ocean rift in a tectonic plate where volcanic rocks were slowly buried. Chert (a form of the mineral quartz) formed as tiny oceanic organisms died and sank into the depths, covering the volcanic rocks. Sediments eroded from nearby landmasses in turn covered the chert as the tectonic plate slowly moved over the Earth’s mantle, driven by heat currents within the planet. Geologists are still puzzling out the sequence of events that ultimately thrust these rocks over younger rocks as they collided with the North American continent millions of years ago.

Indigenous Land

The 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, and First Nations in 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. Sea urchins are gathered by expert divers in late summer, and clamming peaks in the fall.

European Competition

In the 1700’s many European nations attempted to discover and claim a “Northwest Passage” connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Spanish Crown claimed exclusive rights to colonize the west coast of North America based on the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. Eight expeditions between 1774 and 1790 charted parts of today’s Pacific Northwest coast and established a Spanish settlement at Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island. In 1791, Spanish Naval Officer Francisco de Eliza y Reventa was sent to reinforce the Spanish presence at Nootka Sound and direct further exploration of the Strait of Juan de Fuca as a possible Northwest Passage.

Eliza, perhaps hoping to win favor with the Spanish Viceroy of New Spain (Juan Vicente de Guemes Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo, second Count of Revillagigedo) made sure that parts of his superior’s lengthy name and title were liberally utilized in naming geographic points of the territory he explored. Thus, San Juan Island and the larger group of islands making up the San Juan Archipelago honored the important emissary of the Spanish crown.

Spain claimed the area as part of its Territorio de Nutka but relinquished the claim to the United States in the 1819 Adams-Onis Treaty, later confirmed by newly independent Mexico. Britain and the United States continued to both pursue colonial claims to the area.

Surveyors

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 into 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 expedition’s Commander Charles Wilkes charted Turn Island as “Salsbury Point,” in 1841, not realizing that the island was not contiguous with San Juan Island.

In the 1850s, James Alden Jr., a veteran of Wilkes’ expedition, returned to Washington’s inland waterways to complete a survey of the coast as commander of the steamship Active. His survey included recommendations for siting lighthouses and navigational aids. At the same time, British Royal Navy Hydrographer George Henry Richards commanded two survey ships, HMS Plumper and HMS Hecate, surveying the San Juan Islands as well as Vancouver Island. In the course of his survey, Richards corrected Wilkes’ error and charted Turn Island, the name signifying its location at the “turning point” necessary to successfully sail into San Juan Channel. Richards’ name was adopted in the final chart produced by the US survey.

The Pig War

The dual claims to the Pacific Northwest 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.

Alden, still in command of the Active, served as a dispatcher, carrying messages to and from US military forces, and even attempting diplomacy with his British peers, with no apparent success.

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.

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 as-yet unsettled colonial administration of the San Juan Archipelago.  After the jurisdiction was settled, the ceded lands became part of the federal public domain lands. The tribes reserved rights to harvest natural resources in their usual and accustomed places, including the lands and waters surrounding Turn Island.

The official US Government Survey of the area including Turn Island was completed on April 15, 1875, and Turn Island was withdrawn from disposal under the federal land laws as a Lighthouse Reservation on July 15, 1875, recognizing its importance to navigation in the labyrinth passages within the San Juan Archipelago. No lighthouse was ever built on the island, but because of its status, it remained largely undeveloped, retaining its assemblage of species and habitats, serendipitously preserved.

Making a Park

In January 1955, the US Lighthouse Service announced that it had determined that no lighthouse would ever be built on Turn Island, and the property was declared surplus. The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSPRC) applied to receive the island for use as a marine park. WSPRC Director John Vanderzicht noted that only the request of another federal agency could supersede its application.

In fact, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) wished to manage the island for the protection of resident and migratory birds, recognizing its high-quality habitat, including nesting bald eagles. On June 19, 1959, the USFWS and the WSPRC signed a Memorandum of Understanding outlining how the WSPRC would manage recreational use of the island, while USFWS would retain responsibility for protecting the island’s unique resources and wildlife.

On December 24, 1960, Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton approved Public Land Order #2249, establishing the San Juan National Wildlife Refuge, including Turn Island and many other small islands and rocks within the San Juan Archipelago.

The refuge was expanded and renamed in 1975, becoming the San Juan Islands National Wildlife Refuge.

Time has confirmed the partnership between the USFWS and the WSPRC in providing protection and recreation opportunities on Turn Island. As at many of the remote San Juan Island marine parks, the WSPRC installed two composting toilets on Turn Island in 1999. The composting toilets convert waste into inert material through decomposition by bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms, meeting the needs of visitors to one of Washington’s remotest state parks with the smallest impact to the fragile island environment.