Last updated: December 20, 2022
Place
The Salmon Bank
In 1860, Dr. C.B.R. Pemberly declared that: "In the vicinity of the southern end of [San Juan] island are perhaps the best fishing grounds on Puget Sound. Great quantities of halibut, codfish, and salmon are taken by the numerous tribes of Indians who at the proper season resort to this vicinity for the purpose of fishing. The Hudson's Bay Company were formerly in the habit of putting up at this place from two to three thousand barrels of salmon alone which were bought from the natives. Persons supplied with the proper appliances for carrying on a fishery might find it a profitable occupation." Pemberly was describing The Salmon Bank,a shallow shelf that extends for about half a mile offshore from South Beach. This shelf was created by glacial activity which created our park's topography. The abundant marine life on the shelf attracts migratory salmon and halibut for rest and feeding, creating the perfect place for a fishing industry to spring up.
Coast Salish people have fished on the Salmon Bank since time immemorial. The bounteous catch of Native American fishers attracted the attention of Euro-Americans in the 1800s. In 1850, the Hudson's Bay Company began purchasing salmon from indigenous fishers and exporting them in their global trade networks as far as Hawaii; by 1853, the year the Belle Vue Sheep Farm was founded on San Juan Island, the company was purchasing around 600 barrels containing 60 massive salmon each from this spot. Hudson's Bay Company Chief Factor James Douglas enthused to his bosses that year that: San Juan Island's "shores and inlets abound with salmon and other fish which form a productive export and an inexhaustible form of great wealth"
After the Boundary Arbitration Resolution, which made San Juan Island into an American possession, the Salmon Bank transformed from a large, customary fishery into a big business. Corporations invested capital into canneries and fish traps on San Juan Island which replaced the traditional reef netting method. Salmon traps were stationary devices, built on an annual basis which tricked tens of thousands of fish to swim into and get trapped in corrals. Fishery workers could then draw the fish up in massive nets into boats alongside the trap. At the peak of the salmon fishing industry dozens of workers operated up to a dozen fish traps just off of South Beach alone.This prolific harvest, however, exhausted nature's bounties; combined with the growth in highly efficient purse seining fishing boats, the salmon harvest was over-exploited. Though fishing boats are still seen actively harvesting salmon every summer in these waters, the boom times in which our waters spawned a big and valuable business are long gone.
Coast Salish people have fished on the Salmon Bank since time immemorial. The bounteous catch of Native American fishers attracted the attention of Euro-Americans in the 1800s. In 1850, the Hudson's Bay Company began purchasing salmon from indigenous fishers and exporting them in their global trade networks as far as Hawaii; by 1853, the year the Belle Vue Sheep Farm was founded on San Juan Island, the company was purchasing around 600 barrels containing 60 massive salmon each from this spot. Hudson's Bay Company Chief Factor James Douglas enthused to his bosses that year that: San Juan Island's "shores and inlets abound with salmon and other fish which form a productive export and an inexhaustible form of great wealth"
After the Boundary Arbitration Resolution, which made San Juan Island into an American possession, the Salmon Bank transformed from a large, customary fishery into a big business. Corporations invested capital into canneries and fish traps on San Juan Island which replaced the traditional reef netting method. Salmon traps were stationary devices, built on an annual basis which tricked tens of thousands of fish to swim into and get trapped in corrals. Fishery workers could then draw the fish up in massive nets into boats alongside the trap. At the peak of the salmon fishing industry dozens of workers operated up to a dozen fish traps just off of South Beach alone.This prolific harvest, however, exhausted nature's bounties; combined with the growth in highly efficient purse seining fishing boats, the salmon harvest was over-exploited. Though fishing boats are still seen actively harvesting salmon every summer in these waters, the boom times in which our waters spawned a big and valuable business are long gone.