From Salt Creek looking north across the strait to Vancouver Island. Photo courtesy of Russ Veenema.

Nearly 100 miles long, this waterway forms the international boundary between Canada’s Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula on the American side. The strait connects Puget Sound with the Pacific Ocean. Port Angeles is among the handful of towns located along its southern shore.

According to “Washington State Place Names,” the strait was named in 1787 by English maritime fur trader Charles William Barkley (previously misspelled as Barclay), captain of the Imperial Eagle. (No, this Charles Barkley did NOT go on to have a long career as an NBA player and analyst.) In June 1788, another Englishman, Capt. John Meares, examined the entrance and also charted it with the name of its reputed discoverer, Juan de Fuca, who was actually a Greek navigator named Apostolos Valerianos but spent 40 years sailing under the Spanish flag and a Spanish alias. Juan de Fuca had told a detailed story about sailing up the Pacific Coast and finding the entrance to the strait in 1592 while searching for the Strait of Anian, the long-sought Northwest Passage between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.