Friday Harbor

The islands were home to Coast Salish peoples, among them the ancestors of today's Lummi Nation; shell middens at both of the later army camp sites show villages there long before Europeans arrived, and hunting and gathering on the islands goes back 6,000 to 8,000 years. In 1845 the Hudson's Bay Company laid claim to San Juan Island, and it later set up a salmon-curing station and a sheep farm. The town takes its name from Joseph Poalie Friday, a Native Hawaiian who had worked for the company's agricultural arm and later herded sheep around the harbour.

Both Britain and the United States claimed the islands. In 1859 an American settler killed a stray pig owned by the British, starting the dispute known as the Pig War: American settlers asked for military protection and US troops set up camp in the south of the island, while Britain sent Royal Navy ships, and from 1860 to 1872 Royal Marines held a camp in the north-west. Under the Treaty of Washington of 1871 the question went to arbitration by the German Kaiser Wilhelm I, whose commission decided in favour of the United States in October 1872, and the British withdrew.

The San Juan Islands became a separate county in 1873 with Friday Harbor as its seat, and the town was incorporated in 1909. Steamers carried away apples, pears, cherries, strawberries, peas, cream, eggs, salmon and lime. The Great Depression, the Second World War, the pea weevil and competition from eastern Washington ended much of that trade, and since the 1970s tourism, retirement, real estate and construction have brought the town back to prosperity.

Friday Harbor's identity is bound up with the sea and its wildlife. Whale watching is the best-known activity, from boats leaving the harbour and from the shore at Lime Kiln Point, and The Whale Museum in town is devoted to the region's whales. The University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories, a well-known marine biology field station, have made the town a centre of marine science.

The arts are visible everywhere: sculptures stand around the island, and galleries and craft shops line the streets above the ferry landing. The town and the island have appeared in films including Practical Magic and Free Willy 2, and in a series of novels whose first book, set in Friday Harbor, became a television film.

History is part of the island's sense of itself. The Pig War camps are preserved as a national historical park, and the Lummi Nation, whose ancestors lived on the islands, is working to revive traditional reef-net fishing near the English Camp. Friday Harbor shares a sister city, Vela Luka in Croatia, with Anacortes. Life on the island is informal and neighbourly, and much of the community's calendar runs around the ferry schedule.

Friday Harbor had 2,613 people at the 2020 census, in a town of just over two square miles on the east side of San Juan Island facing the San Juan Channel. It is the commercial centre of the whole archipelago, with the county offices, the islands' main shops, schools and services.

The economy rests on tourism, government and the marine laboratories, together with building, real estate and services for the many retirees. Summer transforms the town: ferries unload crowds of day visitors, the marina fills with yachts, and boats and kayaks head out daily in search of whales. In winter the population drops back to its year-round residents.

Everything depends on the ferry. Shopping trips and supplies are planned around the sailings to Anacortes, and the long queues for car space in summer are a constant topic. The floatplanes to Seattle and the small airport offer quicker but dearer alternatives.

Island food draws on the waters around it: Dungeness crab, salmon, halibut, clams and oysters, clams and mussels from the islands' few small family-run shellfish farms, some of which sell direct to visitors. Fish and chips, chowder and crab are the staples of the waterfront, and the restaurants and cafés near the ferry landing and the marina cater to a steady stream of visitors in summer.

The island's farming past survives on a small scale. Apples, pears, cherries, strawberries, peas, cream and eggs were once shipped from Friday Harbor to the mainland, before the trade declined in the mid-20th century.

Coffee shops and bakeries are part of the morning routine before the first ferries, and the bars and pubs of the waterfront serve Washington beer, cider and wine. Self-catering is common, since many visitors stay in rented houses, and the town's grocery stores are the main source of supplies for the whole island.