Shaw Island is the smallest of the four

San Juan Islands The San Juan Islands are an archipelago in the Pacific Northwest of the United States between the U.S. state of Washington and Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. The San Juan Islands are part of Washington state, and form the core ...

served by the

Washington State Ferries Washington State Ferries (WSF) is a government agency that operates automobile and passenger ferry service in the U.S. state of Washington as part of the Washington State Department of Transportation. It runs ten routes serving 20 terminals loc ...

. The island has a land area of and a small year-round population of 240 ( 2010 census). During the summer time, weekends swell with other residents and the occasional tourist. The island is within the historical territory of the

Lummi Nation The Lummi ( ; Lummi: ''Xwlemi'' ; also known as Lhaq'temish (), or ''People of the Sea''), governed by the Lummi Nation, are a Native American tribe of the Coast Salish ethnolinguistic group. They are based in the coastal area of the Pacific N ...

. The United States obtained Shaw Island and the rest of the San Juan archipelago by treaty in 1855, but Lummi retained certain cultural and resource rights, including fishing. The

Wilkes Expedition The United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–1842 was an exploring and surveying expedition of the Pacific Ocean and surrounding lands conducted by the United States. The original appointed commanding officer was Commodore Thomas ap Catesby ...

, in 1841, named the island after John Shaw, a United States Naval Officer. According to Bill Tsilixw James, hereditary chief of the Lummi Nation, the Lummi know the island as Sq'emenen. A San Juan Island resident proposed to the state Board of Geographic Names in 2015 that Squaw Bay be renamed Sq'emenen Bay; that proposal generated a compromise proposal from the Shaw Island Historical Society to rename the bay Reef Net Bay, in recognition of the reef net fishing historically and currently done there. The name "Reef Net Bay" was adopted.

Amenities, roads and public facilities

Shaw Island has a county park, a historic general store open all year, and a post office at the ferry landing. A member-supported library and historical museum are located near the middle of the island. The University of Washington also owns property throughout the island, notably the Cedar Rock Preserve on the south side of the island, a gift from Robert H. Ellis, Jr. The stated vision for these properties is "to maintain and restore native biodiversity and ecosystem function and to facilitate education and research that is consistent with these goals" and "to maintain important parts of the cultural landscape." Shoreline access is best at the Shaw Island County Park, due to its vast beachline. There are of asphalt and of

gravel Gravel is a loose aggregation of rock fragments. Gravel occurs naturally throughout the world as a result of sedimentary and erosive geologic processes; it is also produced in large quantities commercially as crushed stone. Gravel is classifi ...

public roads on Shaw. The primary roads are three loops in the interior of the island, with branches to the ferry dock, Shaw Island County Park, Neck Point, and part-way to the private property of Broken Point.

Tourism

Businesses pertaining to tourism are required to maintain the character of the island as a small-scale, rural, and agricultural community through th
Shaw Subarea Plan
of Washington State's Growth Management Act. These include commercial recreational facilities; transient accommodations by themselves or in combination with any commercial use, food service facilities, and transient moorage and dry storage facilities.

Nuns

There have been three

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

religious institute A religious institute is a type of institute of consecrated life in the Catholic Church whose members take religious vows and lead a life in community with fellow members. Religious institutes are one of the two types of institutes of consecrat ...

s of

nun A nun is a woman who vows to dedicate her life to religious service, typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the enclosure of a monastery or convent.''The Oxford English Dictionary'', vol. X, page 599. The term is o ...

s on Shaw Island.

Benedictine , image = Medalla San Benito.PNG , caption = Design on the obverse side of the Saint Benedict Medal , abbreviation = OSB , formation = , motto = (English: 'Pray and Work') , foun ...

nuns established a

monastery A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer whic ...

on in the 1970s; while the

Sisters of Mercy The Sisters of Mercy is a religious institute of Catholic women founded in 1831 in Dublin, Ireland, by Catherine McAuley. As of 2019, the institute had about 6200 sisters worldwide, organized into a number of independent congregations. They a ...

have owned an unofficial retreat on the island since the 1980s. Nuns of the

Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist The Institute of the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist (FSE) is a Roman Catholic religious congregation for women. The motherhouse is in Meriden, Connecticut, in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford. History The Institute of the Francis ...

ran the island's only store and the ferry terminal for almost 3 decades, until 2004, when they relocated elsewhere.

Historical structures

Shaw Island School District #10, has an operational historic

one-room school One-room schools, or schoolhouses, were commonplace throughout rural portions of various countries, including Prussia, Norway, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Spain. In most rural and s ...

(although a second room was later added), with classes for kindergarten through eighth grade students. Known as the Little Red Schoolhouse, it has been in continuous use since it was built in 1891 and is the longest-running school in the State of Washington. The building is listed on the U.S.

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

. Shaw Island also has a small membership funded

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ...

and historical

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make th ...

Popular culture

Shaw Island was featured during the fifth-season episode "

Access Access may refer to: Companies and organizations * ACCESS (Australia), an Australian youth network * Access (credit card), a former credit card in the United Kingdom * Access Co., a Japanese software company * Access Healthcare, an Indian BPO se ...

" of the political drama ''

The West Wing ''The West Wing'' is an American serial political drama television series created by Aaron Sorkin that was originally broadcast on NBC from September 22, 1999, to May 14, 2006. The series is set primarily in the West Wing of the White Hous ...

'' as the site of a standoff between terrorist suspects and the US government, similar to the Waco, Texas

Branch Davidian The Branch Davidians (or the General Association of Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists) were an apocalyptic new religious movement founded in 1955 by Benjamin Roden. They regard themselves as a continuation of the General Association of ...

standoff.

References

External links

Official Guide to the San Juan IslandsNon-profit island improvement organization
(pre-sale-of-store)

(pre-sale-of-store) {{authority control San Juan Islands Populated places in San Juan County, Washington Unincorporated communities in Washington (state)