Just because we can see the San Juan Islands from several mainland shores does not mean it is simple to receive basic necessities. Major electrical power systems did not appear until 1951. The saga of power to the islands was fully described in my book, San Juan Islands: Into the 21st Century (late 2012).
Laying the cable from Anacortes underwater FIVE MILES to Decatur was not for the faint-hearted. Officials of Orcas Power & Light Company (OPALCO) believes it was the first such submarine cable operation within the United States. The cable emerged from saltwater at Decatur, went overland and then underwater again to Lopez to a sub-station. The cable had to be an unbroken length of at least 38,000 feet and, wound on 10-foot diameter reels, was sent to Fidalgo Island (Anacortes) on a series of rail gondolas chained together, making choice of rail routes extremely critical. Once on Fidalgo's ocean shore, crews transferred the huge reels to a special barge and unwound the cable to lie on the sea bottom, an uneven surface of highs and lows, boulders and sand.
Inevitably, tidal changes or big storms riled the hundreds-of-feet deep channels or ship or boat anchors accidentally picked up the cable and broke it. OPALCO's crews went out in any kind of weather to repair it, since -- of course -- that particular main cable break terminated all power to the then-settled islands.
I was particularly amused at the tale of one crew member. He told of going out to repair a broken cable, in this case not the main one but feeding just one island. He and the crew managed to find both ends of that cable down on the sea bottom, pulled it up on their boat, and respliced it (no small task) .
Only then as they prepared to drop the cable back into the water did they discover that, in retrieving one broken cable end, they had run it through a fixture on their boat!!!! They had to undo the entire splice, redo it, and then return it to the water! I suspect the air was turning blue around that boat!!!!
