Curiously Named Locales: Cape Flattery, Washington

 

Photo credit: Gavin Hardcastle phototripper.com

    Statistics can be misleading. Sometimes they're just so specific that I can't help but be unimpressed. This happens a lot in sports. Here's an example: Brett Favre, Tom Brady and Jerry Rice are the only players to play in more than 300 games and don’t play the kicker position. So. When I read that Cape Flattery is the northwestern-most point of the contiguous United States, I got the same eye-rolling feeling. It isn't the northern-most and it isn't the western-most. What makes it special?

    For one thing, it's the oldest permanently named (by European colonizers) feature in the state of Washington. It was named by Captain James Cook, "discoverer" of the Hawaiian Islands. Apparently the opening north of Cape Flattery flattered Cook's crew with the idea that there might be a harbor. This was the opening of the strait of San Juan de Fuca which Cook managed to sail past on his third voyage ca. 1776. 

Painting credit: Parker McAllister

On the west side of Cape Flattery is a large, almost rectangular stone called the Fuca Pillar after Juan de
Fuca, another ancient European explorer of questionable verisimilitude. De Fuca was a Greek explorer working for the king of Spain who claimed to to have explored the Strait of Anián while searching for the fabled Northwest Passage. This strait was later renamed in his honor. On this voyage, De Fuca mentioned a large spire of rock on the western shore of Cape Flattery, though in his account, the pinnacle was recorded as being on the other side of the strait. 

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Flattery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cook
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_de_Fuca
https://www.historylink.org/File/5035 - Kit Oldham
https://www.fototripper.com/cape-flattery-olympic-national-park/ - Gavin Hardcastle

https://spl.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15015coll5/id/165/ - Parker McAllister