On August 31, 1948, an essay contest sponsored by Richard Exton (1912-1997) of the Exton Realty Company on Orcas Island concludes with selection of the winning entry. It is from Alice Annibal (1912-1970) of Seattle, and the prize is title to little Deadman Island in the San Juans. Having no practical use for the island, Annibal decides to trade it, for $200 and a 12-year-old automobile, to Myrtle Chamberlain (1894-1965), who happily declares she has always wanted to own an island. The island will change hands several times through the years before being purchased in 1975 by The Nature Conservancy, which as of 2024 continues to oversee and protect it as a wildlife preserve.
A Small Island and a New Islander
Among the San Juan archipelago's more than 170 islands in the Salish Sea between Vancouver Island and the Washington mainland are many very small islands and islets -- some unnamed; some green with fir and madrone trees, salal and sword ferns and other vegetation; many merely rock formations rising from the water that are primarily hazards to boaters. One islet, although unremarkable and mostly barren, was already named Dead Man Rock when it appeared on the first survey of the area undertaken by the Washington territorial government in 1874. The island is located at 48 degrees 27' 29" North and 122 degrees 56' 37" West, 150 yards off the southwest coast of Lopez Island, almost directly across San Juan Channel from Cattle Point on San Juan Island.
Who the dead man was for whom the island was named is a mystery. Today the rocky outcrop is known as Deadman or Deadman's Island, both versions of the name appearing on official documents. It is geologically included in a group designated the Geese Islets and is approximately 2.4 acres in size (over the years different official measurements must have been taken at various points in the tidal cycle and from varying distances, as estimates ranging from 1.38 to 4 acres are recorded). It has little soil or vegetation and no fresh water. Its location is subject to prevailing, often strong, winds and storms throughout the winter months. What the first owner, Joseph Carney, intended to do with the island when he purchased it from the U.S. government in 1929 is not known, and it was still in its natural state in the 1940s when it was bought on a whim for $11 by Richard Exton of Orcas Island at a county auction of tax-delinquent properties.
Exton had been living in New York in 1932 when he impulsively took a friend's advice and moved to Orcas Island. He tried raising rabbits unsuccessfully and attempted some farming and other rural endeavors at which, he quickly concluded, he was embarrassingly inept. It occurred to him that more people were becoming interested in living in the San Juans, and that on none of the islands was there a real-estate office to aid potential purchasers. So he went to Seattle, took a test, and obtained a real-estate license. Exton completed only one sale his first year but, in the post-World War II years, increasing numbers of people began looking to the islands for both primary and seasonal home properties. He learned to fly, purchased a plane, and began to give potential buyers flying tours of the islands. He became very successful as the only realtor in the county (he sold the popular Orcas Hotel three times) but was always looking for new ways to stimulate business.
First Prize Is an Island
Beginning in the 1930s and continuing through the improving economy of the 1940s and 1950s, marketers for a wide variety of businesses found that sponsoring contests with big first prizes and numerous smaller prizes stimulated interest in their products or services. Company sales of Pillsbury flour, Colgate toothpaste, Dr. Pepper soda, Heinz ketchup, Post cereals, Kleenex tissues, and many other products were boosted by enticing advertisements in local newspapers and on the radio (and early television) for contests that captured public interest. Some contests required proof of purchase, so a box top, for example, might need to be included with an entry for a baking-soda company contest. Some were contests in which the entrant suggested a name, perhaps for a new model of a product. Some were contests for which entrants might submit a creative idea for a new product or a new use for a current product.
But among the most popular were contests that required the entrant to write a jingle or essay to fit a theme. "Tell us which country you'd most like to visit and why in 25 words or less" would be a typical topic for an airline-sponsored contest. The entrant usually was asked to include with the submission a self-addressed, stamped envelope for potential notification of a prize, and perhaps a small participation fee (25 cents was common). And the rewards for winning were often substantial, with prizes including vacation trips, automobiles, watches, cameras, a mink coat, silver services, luggage, barbecues, and televisions for first or second or third place. Dozens of additional entrants might win a lesser prize of a pair of gloves or a clock; still more might win, for example, a kitchen utensil or harmonica.
It was a marketing tool of proven success when Richard Exton decided in 1948 to offer his little island as the prize in a contest that he hoped would stimulate interest in the San Juans from potential property buyers. The contest required an essay of 100 words or less on "Why I would like to live in the San Juan Islands," and he placed in The Seattle Times not the typical colorful quarter- or half-page advertisement, but a simple notice that was buried in the real-estate section of the classified ads ("Free"). Nevertheless, it caught the eye of many who were regular, determined contest entrants. The contest was announced in May and ended on August 31. The winner was declared to be Alice Annibal of Seattle. The essay she submitted was lyrical and evocative:
"I want my children to have as their American heritage a simple and independent life where values are not based on money alone.
"I want them to know and remember that in spite of wars, disease, and destruction, the earth remains unchanged. Grass grows, flowers bloom, rivers run, season after season. The earth alone can be depended upon.
"I want them to have the opportunity to know and love Puget Sound with its misty horizons, fascinating shorelines, and squat white ferries.
"I want them to be able to say of the beautiful San Juan Islands, 'this is home'" ("1948 Deadman Island").
Alice Annibal was a wife and mother of three and a habitual contest entrant who admitted, "I just can't resist them, much to my husband's disgust" (Robinson). She was thrilled to win the contest (her only other award from her numerous previous contest submissions was some nylon stockings) but somewhat bewildered. She'd never even visited the San Juan Islands and realized, after looking at a map, that getting to her prize would be a challenge. A road ran within 200 yards of the Lopez shoreline, but even then, her husband joked, she would need to enter another contest and win a boat if they were to get across the water. In 2024, Richard Thomas Annibal, her youngest child, still remembered family discussions about what to do with the island. Even if they could get there, the parents considered, it might be rather dangerous and too rocky for the children and, in addition, the family was building a new home, which took up all their available time and resources. Being of a practical nature, Alice Annibal soon decided that she'd really rather trade the island for something more useful -- like a car, perhaps.
News both of Annibal winning the island and the family's dilemma about what to do with it were recounted in the Seattle newspapers, and soon proposals began arriving at the Annibal home. After some negotiation, Annibal decided to take up an offer from Myrtle Chamberlain (also of Seattle) to trade the island for $200 and a 1936 coupe. Chamberlain, interviewed by Frank Lynch for his "Seattle Scene" column in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer concerning her motivation in making the exchange, declared that she had always wanted to own an island and loved the San Juans, inspired, in part, by the series of articles on the travels of June and Farrar Burn through the islands in 1946 that had been serialized in the P-I.
From Private Owners to The Nature Conservancy
Myrtle Chamberlain owned Deadman Island for the rest of her life. Three years after her 1965 death, her son Robert Chamberlain (1929-2004) sold the island. It was resold in 1971 to Josie Beecher, "a single woman," as was particularly noted on San Juan County's official deed jacket recording the sale. Beecher (later Reverend Beecher of the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia) was then a young woman living on Lopez Island who had hoped to buy the island in conjunction with a nearby point of land on Lopez, but when the combined properties were split and sold separately, she was only able to purchase Deadman Island.
An experienced and intrepid canoeist, Beecher made frequent trips to the island, always careful to travel during slack tides as the currents flowing through the channel between Lopez and Deadman islands were very strong and not easily traversed in a small boat without a motor. She would haul her canoe onto the tiny beach and explore the island and nearby reef, thinking about where she would one day position the house she planned to build there and the gardening she could do in the small pockets of soil she found. She watched seals haul out and oyster catchers on the rocks and in 2024 still remembered a Garry oak and wildflowers and some low vegetation here and there. On one trip her 6-foot-4-inch-tall father, who had no canoeing skills, had accompanied her. When they realized that the tide was about to turn, and it was time to leave, they were starting to launch just as a pod of orcas came surging down the channel. They sensibly decided to give the whales right of way before attempting to cross, but that meant that the return was through swift tidal current and considerably more dangerous, especially with a large and enthusiastic, but unhelpful, passenger in the canoe threatening its stability. Fortunately, all went well.
Eventually other life priorities and a reluctant realization that living on the island was never going to be a realistic possibility prompted Beecher's decision to sell the property just as The Nature Conservancy was exploring the possibility of acquiring some small, uninhabited islands in the San Juans to be maintained as wildlife and nature preserves. The Nature Conservancy had launched a chapter in Washington in 1959 and by the 1970s several preserves had already been established in the state, but it was known that the San Juan Islands included some areas of special ecological value, and Deadman Island was in an area of interest. Sam Buck II (1927-2016), a prominent San Juan Island real-estate agent and philanthropist, had already purchased larger Goose Island, just west of Deadman Island, to assure that it would not be available to be part of a proposed scheme to build a bridge from Lopez to San Juan Island across the San Juan Channel. He was committed to Goose Island's long-term preservation and willing to sell it to The Nature Conservancy, so the two islands were purchased together. In November 1975 Beecher signed over her island to the Conservancy.
Nearly a half-century later Rev. Beecher remained pleased that the island she loved was preserved and supervised. It had changed little, although even more soil seemed to have been blown away in the fierce winds, and Conservancy monitors reported little vegetation remaining. Despite its current use value of $0, San Juan County assessed its 2024 land value as $992,240. Deadman and Goose Islands continue to be managed jointly by The Nature Conservancy; neither are open to the public, and only researchers from the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories are allowed access, helping assure that Deadman Island and Goose Island will remain pristine ecological sites long into the future.
