The San Juan archipelago between Canada's Vancouver Island and the Washington mainland has long been a favored hideout and transfer point for smugglers attempting to bring goods and people into the United States, while circumventing customs regulations, payment of duty, and other legalities. The geography of the islands and proximity to Canada are in the smugglers' favor. So, in early days, was the tolerant or even sympathetic attitude of the island population to the activities of the smugglers, often their friends and neighbors. Wool and opium were among the goods those early smugglers transported through the islands. People prohibited from entering the country legally, especially Chinese laborers, were also smuggled through the islands. During Prohibition, well-organized operations brought in large quantities of liquor to satisfy the thirsty Seattle market. In the mid-twentieth century, marijuana, especially the prized "BC Bud," was a frequent cargo. Drug smuggling continues in the twenty-first century, and the U.S. Coast Guard regularly patrols the San Juan Islands on the lookout for those endeavoring to bring illicit goods across the invisible marine border.
Setting and History Favor Smuggling
The Salish Sea in the far Pacific Northwest between Vancouver Island and the coast of Western Washington encompasses more than 300 islands: the Gulf Islands (Canada) and San Juan Islands (United States). Some are just rocky outcroppings, but many others are well-forested remnants of the glaciation that eons ago covered the area. The beautiful shorelines of both large and small islands often feature almost completely hidden coves, bays, and inlets, and between many of the islands are narrow, shallow channels. Anyone with boating skills and a deep knowledge of the area can easily find a secluded spot, all but invisible to passing craft.
The islands were for millennia used by Indigenous Coast Salish people for fishing and seafood harvesting, and the cultivation of camas and other plants, but it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that a trickle of settlers began to arrive from Europe and the United States. In 1846 Britain and the U.S. signed a treaty establishing the 49th parallel of latitude as the division between their territories, but the clause dealing with the border through the islands at the western-most end of the line was in dispute almost immediately. San Juan Island was especially contested, each country claiming it for its strategic and development potential.
From 1859 to 1872 San Juan Island and the more-than-170 others closest to the U.S. were under shared British and American military occupation, and the military provided the only legal oversight; there was no civil government, and hence no taxes were paid, and no trade regulations or duties were imposed. Victoria, headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company and the British government for the region, was on Vancouver Island just across Haro Strait from San Juan. It was common for both British and American settlers to engage in trade; goods flowed back and forth freely without restriction. In 1872 an arbitration resulted in San Juan and the other islands to the east being awarded to the U.S. They were absorbed into Washington Territory's Whatcom County, which promptly imposed personal property taxes, poll taxes, school taxes, customs rules, and a host of other laws and regulations. Islanders, who had been independent of these outrageous (to their minds) restrictions, quickly formed a separate San Juan County, where they could self-regulate and retain the strong independence characteristic of this frontier population.
Nowhere was this independence more immediately apparent than in the attitude toward trade. The early settlers had easily and frequently purchased goods from Victoria, and the growing population on Vancouver Island was a good market for their fruit and other crops and products. No one regulated this trade, and purchasers paid no duty. The island residents couldn't see any good reason why this open, sensible system, which satisfied everyone except, now, the government officials of both countries, should change. Years later a Canadian diplomat and historian noted that "the boundary between Canada and the United States is a typically [ill-designed] creation: it is physically invisible, geographically illogical, militarily indefensible, and emotionally inescapable" (Moore, xi).
Prices for goods were often much higher in one country than the other; all imports were supposed to be registered with officials and often import duties were required. Some American merchants found it advantageous to purchase relatively inexpensive products in Canada, repackage the goods in the U.S. and sell them, at profit, as American goods. Smuggling became commonplace. Smugglers were not seen as criminals by most islanders but as members of the profession of "importers of contraband goods" (Moore, 16), and smuggling was deemed just a common-sense way to get the most return possible on their products. In 1894 a captain on Puget Sound waters described how smuggling operations worked:
"Goods intended to be smuggled into the United States are taken from Victoria to one of the [Gulf Islands] which is under the British flag. Within a stone's throw of Puget Sound are several [San Juan] islands which belong to the United States. The goods are removed during the night to one of these islands, and when an American steamer arrives ... are put on board and go to the United States ports as American goods, no questions asked" ("Smuggling on the Sound").
Some men became career smugglers, but many others occasionally just couldn't resist the temptation to make a bit of quick money. One of the easiest items to smuggle across the border was opium. Opium was then legal under both British and U.S. law, and factories in Victoria quickly sprang up to meet growing demand for the drug (especially in the Chinese immigrant population) which was processed as a paste and packaged in brass tins. A tin containing about six ounces sold for $12 to $15 in Victoria, but the U.S. imposed a $12-per-tin duty on import. In the U.S. tins were sold for $45. Travelers on legitimate trips to Victoria frequently brought back just a tin or two hidden in their coats, thereby joining the ranks of what were known as "pocket smugglers." And while Canadian goods flowed in more quantity to the U.S. than vice versa, smuggling went on in both directions. A Victoria newspaper reported in 1894 that "a prize of some value" had been captured by Canadian customs officials who seized a 25-foot sloop "loaded with the best strawberries Orcas Island can produce" (Islander, July 12, 1894).
For years smugglers had little reason to fear capture. Initially U.S. customs officers had only one boat, a heavy launch with a top speed of a feeble four miles per hour. It was difficult to maneuver and could not venture through the many narrow channels among the islands. The smugglers, in swift sailing or, later, gasoline-powered vessels, could easily outrun and out-maneuver their pursuers and had the advantage of their intimate knowledge of the sea around the islands and all the best hiding places, like the small bay behind the lighthouse on Decatur Island. "Dodging federal agents, out-running shoot-outs, and returning to port with bullet holes in the sides of their boats were part of the game" (Van Valkenburg, 96).
Early Smugglers and Their Operations
While many people were tolerant of smuggling goods across the border, the traffic in Chinese laborers was less enthusiastically supported. Many Chinese immigrants had come to the U.S. to work on railroad construction in the mid-nineteenth century, and it was assumed that, having earned their pay, the men would return to China. Instead, many settled on the West Coast, established businesses, and prospered to the extent that a large portion of the white population felt threatened. Ultimately, in 1882 the federal government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited additional immigration from China. However, Americans continued to want the cheap labor that Chinese workers provided, and Chinese immigrants continued to seek the opportunities and prosperity they felt the U.S. offered. A lucrative business soon developed smuggling Chinese laborers from Vancouver Island through the San Juans to the mainland, where they then disappeared into established Chinese populations. Often, if chased by immigration authorities, the smugglers would simply reverse course and leave their passengers, who each paid $50 to $100 or more to be smuggled in, on a Canadian island and tell them that they were now in the U.S.
In one incident, a group of Chinese was simply abandoned on an almost-barren islet in San Juan Channel between San Juan and Lopez islands, where they were discovered days later barely subsisting on clams they found on the rocks. The islet still carries the name China Rock. In 1905 Harry Thomas (alias Sumners) and Fred Anderson were bringing 14 Chinese workers into the U.S. when their boat was driven up on the rocks of Lopez Island in a high wind. Local residents rescued the men, and the smugglers offered them $100 to look after the workers until they could get another boat. The rescuers, instead, notified authorities who picked up the smugglers and collected the Chinese for transport to the Port Townsend detention station.
One smuggler especially noted for bringing in many Chinese immigrants was Jim Kelly, known as "Red" (although not particularly red-headed) or "Pig Iron" (for the smelted iron he had stolen on the East Coast), who operated chiefly out of Canada but who knew many settlers in the islands with whom he could shelter. A short social note appeared in the local newspaper around Christmas in 1903, reporting that Kelly, "the notorious Chinese and opium smuggler, who recently completed a sentence in the federal penitentiary at McNeil's Island, has lately been visiting some of his San Juan friends and acquaintances" (San Juan Islander, December 24, 1903). He was usually successful in evading authorities and continued smuggling until, one evening in 1908, as he was finishing supper at the pile driver on one of the fish traps on the salmon banks just off San Juan Island's western shore, he rose from the table, stretched, and dropped dead on the spot.
One of the most common goods smuggled from Vancouver Island to the U.S. was raw wool, which sold at considerably more per pound in the U.S. than in Canada. Canadian wool was smuggled in and then blended with island wool before being sold as a completely American product. Island farmers reporting their shipments of wool seemed to have remarkably high- yielding sheep. "It is related that one sheep rancher with a hundred head shipped to the Port Townsend market in a single year more than thirty tons of wool" (Splitstone, 45). Revenue officials knew, of course, that this was going on but had no proof, until the 1905 arrest of Alfred Burke (1836-?) of Shaw Island.
Burke had settled in the San Juans long before the boundary controversy and was a man of quiet demeanor. He had been suspected of smuggling wool by revenue officials on both sides of the border, who were finally able to mark Canadian wool with wood skewer inserts that were then traced to wool stored in the warehouse of W. E. Sutherland (1848-?) of Orcas Island. Burke's sleek black skiff, presumed to be used in wool smuggling, was seized by customs officers, taken to Port Townsend, and promptly stolen from the custody of the custom office boatman. There was much popular sympathy for Burke, and the editor of the local newspaper, the San Juan Islander, wondered whether this represented a general disrespect of the law or a general feeling that much worse offenders were getting away with similar crimes. Burke was acquitted of smuggling offenses since no one had actually seen him put the marked wool into the warehouse.
The most lucrative cargo, by far, was the opium that was brought from Victoria and made its way through the islands before being shipped on to Seattle and other areas. And the king of the opium smugglers was Lawrence "Larry" Kelly (ca. 1845-?), no relation to, but often confused with, Jim Kelly. Larry Kelly, a native of Ireland, took to the sea as a young man and shipped into Louisiana, where he decided to enlist in the Confederate army during the Civil War. He arrived in Seattle sometime after the war ended and by 1878 had settled on the southwest point of Guemes Island near Anacortes. The point, which still bears his name, offered great views of Rosario Strait, Bellingham and Guemes Channels, and, most importantly to the smuggler, any revenue boats in the area. Noted writer Stewart Edward White (1873-1946) described Kelly as "looking like a tough customer. He had a round head, thick brown hair, tousled and uncombed, and a bushy beard grown high up his cheek bones, so stiff and wiry it thrust forward at a truculent angle from his chin" (Elmore, 34). He quickly became known to revenue officers for his superb boating skills and ability to outmaneuver them in boats he painted black and smeared with tallow for increased speed. He was arrested numerous times beginning in 1882 but was often let off with a fine that barely put a dent in his considerable profits from smuggling runs carrying hundreds of tins of opium.
Kelly married a young woman named Lizzie (sources give many different versions of her last name) in 1877. He became sufficiently prosperous that he bought the western half of Sinclair Island (a small island just north of Guemes) in 1886 and was so popular a resident there that he was elected to the school board. When he was convicted and sent to McNeil Island prison in 1891, his Sinclair neighbors petitioned for him to be pardoned. Through the early 1900s he served several stints at McNeil but always returned to smuggling immediately upon release. His wife, who could no longer put up with his treatment of her, eventually sold the Sinclair property (which had been registered in her name to avoid confiscation whenever Kelly was caught) and moved to Anacortes. As he aged, Kelly found that the customs officers had better boats and pursued him with greater determination while his energy began to flag. Some reports say that he eventually petitioned successfully to be accepted at a home for retired Confederate soldiers in New Orleans.
The rampant smuggling of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries began to wane, in part due to increased enforcement. President Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) "pronounced the Puget Sound area 'the cause of more discord and annoyance than all the rest of the [custom districts] put together'" (Richardson, "In the Wake ..."). He was angry about the numbers of Chinese immigrants coming into the country illegally and the seemingly open smuggling of opium and determined to do something about it. As a political favor to noted evangelist Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), Cleveland appointed Beecher's son Herbert Foote Beecher (1854-1925) customs collector of the Puget Sound district. It was a good decision but not popular with senators who were profiting from the smugglers' activities. Beecher was focused and energetic and learned quickly how the smugglers operated. In little more than a year $150,000 worth of opium was seized; in the previous 15 years a total of only $35,000 had been netted from all seizures, fines, and forfeitures. And the customs office obtained better boats with more skilled crews including, in 1903, the 85-foot revenue cutter Arcata, a converted steam tug equipped with powerful searchlights, machine guns, and even a one-pound cannon accurate to 500 yards (and a captain eager to use it). Dedicated to tracking down and capturing smugglers, it was a vessel that smugglers all knew to avoid. Bringing goods and people through the San Juan Islands became increasingly challenging, and fewer were willing to risk the consequences.
Prohibition Liquor Smuggling
In 1916, four years before the 18th Amendment initiated alcohol prohibition nationwide, Washington went "dry" pursuant to a statewide initiative passed in November 1914. That meant, of course, that new sources had to be found to supply the liquor that the populace continued to want. In the San Juan Islands two approaches immediately addressed the problem: local "moonshine" stills produced liquor in secluded island spots and smuggling liquor from Canada became an important activity. Once again smugglers found the San Juan Islands to be an effective avenue for shipping illicit goods. "The border with Canada was long, undefended and indefensible. Canada had strong drink and the United States did not. There was need -- thirst; there was motive -- profit; and there was opportunity -- and opportunists" (Newsome, 11). The financial rewards were substantial. Liquor could be purchased for 50 cents per bottle in 100-bottle lots in Victoria; a smuggler in some hidden cove in the islands received $2.25 per bottle; American rumrunners then delivered the liquor to middlemen in Seattle for $7 per bottle; and the middlemen sold the liquor for $12 per bottle to speakeasies and individuals.
Smuggling liquor through the islands involved several techniques designed to avoid detection when boats of well-known smugglers were spotted and about to be boarded. A dozen bottles of liquor were generally transported in a burlap gunny sack, although also common were sacks for a half-dozen bottles that were sewn into the sacks end-to-end like sausages, "the original six-pack" (Richardson, Pig War Islands, 311). These sacks were often filled with rock salt and cork and were thrown overboard when customs officers were in pursuit. Later, when customs officials had finished their futile on-board searches and departed, the salt dissolved and the cork refloated the sacks, making them easy to retrieve. One Victoria dealer in burlap sacks claimed to have sold 3,000 bags a week to a single customer. Some smugglers tried keelhauling, suspending the sacks from a line and towing the cache out of sight well below the water surface. Sacks were hidden in false bottoms of the boats or shipped under rafts of logs floated from Canada or inserted into hollow logs. It was a constant battle of wits and a "game of hide and seek that smugglers and customs men [played] with zest" (Splitstone, 45).
One of the key individuals in the well-organized operation that controlled much of the trade in the region was Roy Olmstead (1886-1966), a former Seattle policeman who found better profits on the other side of the law. He quickly became the major purveyor of illegal liquor in the south Puget Sound area. Among Olmstead's confederates was Prosper Graignic (1891-1965) whose knowledge of the San Juan Islands and superb boating skills made him especially useful to the smuggling operations. Of French heritage, he came to Washington, married a Native American woman, and moved to Waldron Island. He was able to transport liquor supplies almost at will, and his "forte was the ability to navigate in weather neither the Coast Guard nor sound liquor pirates would dare face" (McAbee). He was indicted with Olmstead in 1924 but skipped bail and fled to Canada. Arrested three years later and sent to prison, Graignic's career as a smuggler came to an end with his release.
Another islander who worked for a time for Olmstead was Bill Chevalier (1896-1982), from a family of early settlers and fishermen. His agile boat had two 300-horsepower engines, and he could travel 30 to 40 miles-per-hour on a moonless night to deliver a shipment of liquor to Seattle. He was frequently chased by customs officials but never caught, and he reminisced later that it probably helped that the sheriff, the mayor, and the police were all paid off. He earned $100 per trip but reluctantly stopped when his wife insisted that he take up a less risky occupation. In the 1970s he was a popular visitor at a local hangout in Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, where he loved sharing stories of his rumrunning adventures.
A particularly gruesome episode in the liquor trade through the islands occurred in 1924. The workboat Beryl G was seen adrift and about to crash on the rocks off Turn Point lighthouse near Stuart Island when it was pulled to safety by the lighthouse keeper. On board were found bloodstains and bullet holes but no crew. The Coast Guard towed the boat into Friday Harbor for investigation. Later it was found that the owner, Canadian William Gillis, and his son Bill had vanished and were presumed dead, probably after having taken a cache of Canadian liquor to Sidney Island (a Canadian island near the international boundary), where it was to have been picked up by an American boat. Eventually two Canadians were convicted of murdering Gillis and his son (although their bodies were never found) and executed by sentence of the Canadian court.
By 1926 the Friday Harbor Journal asserted "Puget Sound is drying up" (Richardson, Pig War Islands, 324-25). More-skilled customs enforcement, an increase in revenue cutters on continuous patrol (as many as 26 at a time), and more convictions for smuggling and supplying liquor all helped diminish smuggling activity. And then in 1933 the 21st Amendment, which repealed nationwide prohibition, took effect, removing the incentive for most of the smuggling.
Later Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Smuggling
A new product in the 1960s that was to become a profitable enterprise for local smugglers was marijuana. American soldiers returning from Vietnam, where the drug was common, had developed a taste for it and, while it was an illegal substance in the U.S., it was not just imported into but farmed legally in Canada. An especially potent strain was developed by British Columbian growers and quickly acquired the name "BC Bud," a term that ultimately was applied to several different strains of marijuana popular across the border. In the 1980s a regional customs service official reported that, as had been true 100 years prior in the 1880s, "extensive and isolated coastlines ... in the islands of the San Juan group make Puget Sound desirable from a smuggler's point of view" (Turner). In 2003 a U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform report concerning federal enforcement of borders specifically mentioned the San Juan Islands as a frequent site of drug smuggling operations.
Reports of drug seizures remain common. In 2009 a Canadian was arrested when he was seen transferring 11 bags found to contain marijuana from his boat, beached on San Juan Island, to a van that had come to meet him. In 2015 the Coast Guard confiscated 24 kilograms of the drug ecstasy (MDMA) from a boat seized in waters near San Juan Island. Three years later a joint Canadian/American "Operation Shiprider" with cross-border authority arrested a Canadian and a Washington resident for attempting to smuggle cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine from the U.S. into Canada through the San Juans. In the 2020s Coast Guard ships from Bellingham and Port Angeles frequently patrol the waters among the San Juan Islands on the lookout for those attempting to bypass import regulations as drugs, not just from Canada but South America and elsewhere, are brought to island landings on their way to the mainland. The goods coming in have changed over the decades, but the San Juan Islands with their complex passages and numerous natural hiding places for evading officials are no less alluring for smugglers now than they were more than a century ago.
