Colonial Despatches

Dungeness Inlet, now Dungeness Bay, looks out to the eastern end of the Juan de Fuca Strait from the north end of the Olympic Peninsula. This small, east-facing bay is sheltered from the Strait’s currents by what Vancouver noted as a low sandy point of land, or a spit, which, as he continued, resembled Dungeness in the British channel.1 And, although Vancouver named it “New Dungeness”, the shortened form of Dungeness came to name the bay and spit, a nearby river, and, eventually, a town.2

• 1. Edmond S. Meany, Origin of Washington Geographic Names (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1923), 73.
• 2. Ibid.