San Juan Islands
This archipelago rests north of Puget Sound, in the Juan de Fuca Strait, Washington State, and is part of the Salish Sea. The San Juan Islands are divided from their nearby Canadian cousins, the Gulf Islands, by the Haro Strait. Of the collection of more than 170 islands, the largest are San Juan, Orcas, and Lopez, followed by the smaller, sparsely inhabited, Stuart, Waldron, Lummi, Shaw, Blakey, Cypress, Guemes, and Decatur islands.1
Though San Juan Island planted the seed for the Pig War, the surrounding islands, too, were swept into the outcome of the political fray, and ceded to the United States in 1872 by boundary-arbiter Emperor William I of Germany.2
Mentions of this place in the documents