During the first half of the 1800s, the Hudson Bay Company (HBC) expanded their fur-trading empire establishing forts, farms, and warehouses in the Pacific Northwest. At this time the HBC shipping routes extended throughout the British empire, and…

In 1859 the British survey ship HMS Plumper was scouting the San Juan Islands during the joint occupation of the Islands by the British and the United States. Oarsmen from the HMS Plumper took a skiff into what they would later call "Friday Harbor." …

In June of 1873 settlers James and Selina Jane Dwyer were murdered on their homestead at Kanaka Bay on San Juan Island. James was shot as he worked in his fields. His pregnant wife was sewing baby clothes in their little cabin when the killer found…