On November 5, 1968, voters on Lopez Island approve the creation of a port district, the primary purpose of which is to establish a public airport to serve island residents and visitors. The district covers the entire island and is divided into three commissioner districts. Plans for the airport will get a boost the following year when the local American Legion post donates an existing grass landing strip to the Port. Supplemented with other gifts and purchases, this will be developed into the Lopez Island Airport. In later years the runway will be paved, a parallel taxiway and apron installed, public and private hangars built, and lighting and other safety equipment provided. In addition to the airport, the Port of Lopez maintains one of five oil-spill response trailers provided to San Juan County by the state Department of Ecology. The Port in the new century will consider acquiring shoreland properties to add to its portfolio and weighs proposals that it take over the island's solid-waste transfer facility, but keeps its focus on the operation and improvement of the island's critical air link.
Island History
Lopez Island takes its name from Gonzalo Lopez de Haro, the pilot of a Spanish ship that sailed through the San Juan Islands in 1790. In 1841 American Captain Charles Wilkes (1798-1877) renamed it Chauncey’s Island, but in a game of tit-for-tat, British Captain Henry Kellett restored the island to its Spanish name five years later, and it has remained so ever since. Lopez is the third largest of the San Juans at a little less than 30 square miles and has approximately 63 miles of shoreline. For thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans, the island had been inhabited by Natives of the Lummi and Straits Salish groups. Although deserting British sailors and Scandinavian fishermen were occasionally present on the island in the first half of the nineteenth century, it wasn't until the 1850s that permanent, non-Native settlement took root.
Among the first whites to land and stay was Hiram E. Hutchinson, who arrived in 1850 and walked into the middle of a war between local tribes and marauding Haida Indians, who episodically swept down from the north on slaving raids. Hutchinson helped the local Natives fight off the Haida, then married a Tlinget woman named Mary in an Indian ceremony and settled permanently on the island. But the island was to remain sparsely inhabited for years -- the onslaught of Western diseases and earlier Haida incursions had decimated its Native population, and non-native settlers were slow in coming. An 1870 census put the total population at just 80, and a visitor in 1871 noted "Nothing there, no fields or cleared land. Mr. Hutchinson had small store on beach” (Nancy McCoy, "History of Lopez Island").
In 1872, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, acting as arbitrator, awarded the San Juan Islands to the United States after years of dispute between the British and American governments over their ownership. Lopez Island's first small school opened that same year, and one year later Hutchinson opened the first post office. Over the next decade, more people moved to the island, and by the time of the 1880 census the population had more than doubled, to 180. Eventually, three small communities were to spring up -- Port Stanley, Lopez Village, and Richardson. The population of the island grew incrementally throughout the twentieth century, and the 2000 federal census counted 2,179 residents.
Getting There and Getting Back
In later years vehicle-carrying ferries started landing near Upright Head on the north end of the island, where the ferry terminal is still located.
Travel by boat was slow and subject to weather delays, and when private aviation began to boom after World War II, all of the major San Juan Islands, including Lopez, became accessible by air. In those early days, floatplanes would simply land on the water and taxi to shore, but wheeled planes had to set down on beaches and farmers' fields, occasionally with unfortunate results. There was a need for well-maintained airfields, and port districts were a logical choice to provide them.
The Legion Takes the Lead
The Lopez Island airport had its start as a cooperative public effort. In 1957, Mr. and Mrs. Bernard J. McConaghy donated a 100- by 2,575-foot strip of land on the island's west side to the Hoey-Kjargaard Post 185 of the American Legion. Using volunteer labor and donated equipment, the Legion post established the island's first purpose-built airstrip on the McConaghy property, and in subsequent years purchased three smaller pieces of land on the airstrip's north end to lengthen the runway. The upkeep of the airport was a financial burden to Post 185, however, and in 1965 it appealed to the residents of the island for additional aid. This was to give impetus to the idea of creating a port district to take over and operate the airport that the Legion and the people had built.
The value of airports to island populations was obvious, the advantages of having them operate as public facilities were clear, and in the San Juans there was a precedent that Lopez Island could follow. The voters of the larger Orcas Island to the north of Lopez had established a port district in 1958, and that district had in the following years purchased a small, private airstrip, made substantial improvements, and successfully operated it as a public facility. Lopez, with about half the population of Orcas, took another decade to take similar steps, but on November 5, 1968, the voters there created the Port of Lopez. The ballot proposition was simple and direct:
"Shall a Port District to be known as the 'Port of Lopez' and containing all of the area of Lopez Island be created?" (Official Ballot: Special Election)
The ballot also carried the names of three candidates, one for each of the Port's three commissioner districts, and all running unopposed. When the votes were tallied, Lopez Island had a port district and its first three port commissioners: Edward Borg, Malcolm MacLeod, and Owen Higgins. Although it wasn't explicit in the ballot language, the Port of Lopez, like the Port of Orcas, had but one initial function -- to provide a safe, year-around airport for the benefit of its island constituents.
A Bump on the Runway
The first official act of the new port commission was to seek a loan of $1,825 from the San Juan County Auditor for expenses the Port needed to incur immediately, to be repaid from 1970 tax receipts. "Resolution No. 1," passed on May 27, 1969, authorized this transaction, and noted that the "assessed value of the Lopez Port District," which encompassed all of the nearly 30-square-mile island, was at that time a mere $2,155,833 (Port of Lopez Resolution No. 1). Also in 1969, a small strip of land adjacent to the airport that was owned by San Juan County was quit-claimed to the port district.
It appears that for the next several years, the port commission primarily busied itself with maintaining the airport and making incremental improvements, but an issue cropped up in 1976 that put the Port's very existence into question -- the surprising discovery that a required step in port formation had been omitted in 1968, and that the Port of Lopez technically had been operating since then without full legal status. The state law authorizing port districts as municipal corporations required that a county's board of commissioners formally canvas the results of a port election and "declare" that a port has received sufficient votes (RCW 53.04.060). San Juan County had failed to do that for the Port of Orcas after its election in 1958, only correcting the error two years later.
Inexplicably, the county made the same mistake with the Port of Lopez, and this time it took seven years to fix. Finally, on July 7, 1976, the San Juan County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution nunc pro tunc, affirming the 1968 vote and declaring the Port of Lopez to be officially established. ("Nunc pro tunc" is Latin legalese for "now for then," and merely means that the terms of an order or resolution that is made nunc pro tunc will be retroactive to the time that the order or resolution properly should have been made.) In the same resolution, the election of the three original port commissioners also was affirmed.
Moving Ahead
Although nothing in the port district's charter limits its activities to airport operation, that is why it was created and that is what it has concentrated on in the years since its formation. The original grass landing strip built while the American Legion post owned the land was first paved in 1978. Additional land was purchased by the Port on the south end of the airport in the mid-1990s to provide additional safety clearance for planes. More recently, the Port has made two additional purchases -- one of approximately 19 acres on the north end of the airfield, again for safety purposes, and another two acres adjacent to the airport that houses four airplane hangars. The port now owns and leases out a total of six hangars, and there are an additional 28 hangars privately owned. In 2003 the Port repaved the 2,904-foot main runway, a project funded in large part by grants from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Also in 2003, the Port of Lopez shared the Washington Public Ports Association's "Port of the Year" honors with the much larger Port of Tacoma. In making its award, the association noted the role the public had taken in airport development:
"For the Port of Lopez, marshalling volunteer community support has been a cornerstone of its efforts in maintaining the airport. Volunteers planted 215 drought-tolerant, low-growing evergreen trees; an adjacent property owner donated an easement for a stormwater runoff system which enabled the port to proceed with safety and security improvements while helping the drainage for adjacent property owners; and a new rotating beacon was installed, with local help, which is less intrusive into neighbor's properties" ("Press Release from WPPA").
Although it has concentrated on developing and maintaining the airport, the port district has contributed to the Lopez Island community in other ways. In 1986 a Seattle woman, Natalie Roush, donated a lot to the port district with the hope, but not the condition, that it be used for public purposes. The Port held the property for several years, and in the 1990s sold it for $1 to the Lopez Community Center Association, which has used the land to build an outdoor pavilion, a performance center, a children's center, and a skate park. This has become a center of island life, and it was made possible by the port district's donation of the land it had received from Ms. Roush.
Today and Tomorrow
The Lopez Island Airport has become an integral part of island life, and it is classified as an Essential Public Facility under the state's Growth Management Act. Three airlines -- Kenmore Air, San Juan Airlines, and Island Air -- provide passenger and freight service, and the airport is also used for crucial medevac flights. In addition, volunteer pilots ferry island residents back and forth for non-emergency medical treatments.
In 2011, the Washington State Department of Transportation reported that there were 33 single-engine planes and one multi-engine based at the Lopez Island Airport. Because the airport is not manned, precise flight statistics are hard to come by, but the same WSDOT report indicated that there were approximately 3,500 commercial flights per year, and the number of private flights is no doubt much greater. In fact, in a 1994 speech, U.S. Representative Rick Larson (Democrat, Second District) noted that even that long ago
"Lopez Airport experiences 31,000 takeoffs and landings, and generates over $7 million for our local economy" ("Port of Lopez awarded $805K Federal Grant").
As it enters the second decade of the twenty-first century, the Port has considered expanding its operations beyond the airport. There have been discussions about purchasing shorelands to further the district's economic development and recreational goals, and to increase public access to the water. The port commission has also had preliminary discussions about taking over the island's solid-waste transfer station, although no decision has been made on either of these proposals. But the Lopez Island Airport remains the port district's main pride and focus, and no doubt will for decades to come.
