HUGE GLACIERS ONCE COVERED THE SAN JUAN ISLANDS

Horseshoe Lake on Blakely Island in the San Juan Island group probably once was carved out by moving ice.  In the distant past glaciers from what is now Canada continued on to an area beyond today's city of Renton WA, south of Seattle. The ice overhead at Bellingham and the North Cascades (yes, all the way over the Columbia River, too) is estimated to have been 5,000 to 6,000 feet deep in most areas described. When climate changes occurred and the glaciers melted, the huge volume of water overwhelmed the mountains and valleys west of today's Bellingham, drowning them to create the islands of today, most of them just the mountain tops of the prior range and valleys. This leaves a pleasant group of 172 islands and islets we call the San Juan Islands. Marks from this prehistoric glacier can be seen in the North Cascades Mountains west of Mount Baker at Church Mountain. Imagine this ice deposit thousands of feet thick!  Several San Juan islands still have deep lakes for people and trout to enjoy.

Today the islands are a playground for boaters and kayakers, as well as encompassing fertile lands with crops and animals. The North Cascades range running roughly north and south and parallel with the Pacific Ocean shores about 40 miles west remains as a barrier between western and eastern Washington, causing widely different climates in the state. It is cool and seldom snowing on the west with daytime temps from about 45 to 80 degrees year round and an average of about 33 inches of rain annually. The east side is partially a former lava plain interrupted by valleys, hills, flatlands, and forests that averages more like 25 to 100 degrees annually but is rich in rivers and water so is a farming paradise. (Temperatures are my estimates and not official.)

Several of my published books carry tales of what went on in this extremely variable land: The Columbia River, Stevens Pass, North Cascades Highway and The North Cascadians, San Juan Islands: Into the 21st Century, and others that touch on featured people or occurrences of the humans that settled these beautiful and challenging lands. I have traveled along all 1243 miles of the Columbia River, and my family has had a log cabin in the San Juans for more than 50 years.