• Mt. Baker from American Camp prairie

    San Juan Island

    National Historical Park Washington

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  • Park on Winter Schedule

    The American Camp Visitor Center is closed Thanksgiving Day, re-opening Friday. Winter hours: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Wednesday-Sunday. The English Camp Visitor Center is closed for the winter. Grounds at both units are open from dawn to 11 p.m. daily. More »

Intertidal Organisms

Purple Seastars
Rebecca Smith
 

Don't miss an opportunity to go exploring at low tide. Tidepools in American Camp are especially rich with sea anemones, pink, purple, and orange sea stars, sea urchins, crabs, periwinkles, dogwinkles, great tangles of kelp and the largest chiton in the world: the gumboot.

Intertidal communities are valuable vital signs of important changes in the near-shore marine ecosystem as well as marine water quality. They are vulnerable to stressors such as pollution (e.g. oil spills), harvest, trampling, and global climate change.

Links:

University of Washington Friday Harbor Laboratories
http://depts.washington.edu/fhl/

Fishing and Shellfishing
http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/

NCCN Intertidal Monitoring http://science.nature.nps.gov/im/units/nccn/vs/intertidal/intertidal.cfm

Did You Know?

Capt. Lewis Cass Hunt

Capt. Lewis Cass Hunt, who squabbled with Capt. George E. Pickett over buildings on San Juan Island, was the brother of Henry Hunt, who commanded the Union artillery at the Battle of Gettysburg. Hunt's guns would largely decimate Pickett's division before they reached the Union lines.