Shaw Island is the smallest of the four San Juan Islands served by the Washington State Ferries. The island has a land area of 19.952 km² (7.7037 sq mi) and a small year-round population of 240 (2010 census), with only a slight increase during tourist season. The Wilkes Expedition, in 1841, named the island after John Shaw, a United States Naval Officer. This island has the reputation for being "exclusive", yet the island enjoys a rich, tight-knit community where everyone knows everyone and only the last four digits of phone numbers are given.
Many years ago, a sign was put high up, by an individual, at the terminal reading "residents and guests only." The sign was so high that nobody wanted to climb up and claim it so it was posted for a couple of weeks.
In the years of 2009-2010, it was reported that several residences were hit by the "Barefoot Bandit".
On July 24, 2011, 44-youth were injured when a tractor pulling a trailer downhill was overpowered by the sheer weight of the people riding the trailer. About 50 people were on the island from two different churches on a summer retreat. When descending down the steep grade of Hoffman Cove Road, the trailer overpowered the tractor and began pushing it down the grade. As a result, the whole unit jackknifed a spilled the occupants onto the road. Four youth were airlifted to hospital, while paramedics were sent from Orcas Island to tend to the rest of the injured. A ferry was re-routed to take the less seriously injured to the mainland.
Read more about Shaw Island: Public Land, Nuns, Historical Structures
Famous quotes containing the words shaw and/or island:
“It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“The shifting islands! who would not be willing that his house should be undermined by such a foe! The inhabitant of an island can tell what currents formed the land which he cultivates; and his earth is still being created or destroyed. There before his door, perchance, still empties the stream which brought down the material of his farm ages before, and is still bringing it down or washing it away,—the graceful, gentle robber!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)