Point Roberts is a pene-exclave of the United States on the southernmost tip of the Tsawwassen Peninsula, 21 miles (34 km) south of Vancouver, British Columbia 32 miles (52 km) northwest of Bellingham, Washington. Point Roberts acquired its present name from Captain George Vancouver who named it after his friend Henry Roberts, who had originally been given command of the expedition. Point Roberts was created when the United Kingdom and the United States settled the Pacific Northwest American-Canadian border dispute in the mid-19th century with the Oregon Treaty.

The first Europeans to see Point Roberts were members of the 1791 expedition of Francisco de Eliza. The maps produced from Eliza’s explorations depicted Point Roberts as “Isla de Cepeda” or “Isla de Zepeda”. In 1792, the British expedition of George Vancouver and the Spanish expedition of Dionisio Alcalá Galiano encountered one another near Point Roberts. On the morning of June 13, 1792, the two ships under Galiano sailed into Boundary Bay and verified Point Roberts was not an island, which was thus renamed Punta Cepeda. Point Roberts assumed its present geopolitical status in 1846 when the Oregon Treaty extended the 49th parallel as the boundary between U.S. and British territory from the Rocky Mountains to Georgia Strait.

The Strait of Georgia or the Georgia Strait is an arm of the Pacific Ocean between Vancouver Island and the extreme southwestern mainland coast of British Columbia, Canada, and the extreme northwestern mainland coast of Washington, United States. It is approximately 150 miles (240 km) long and varies in width from 12 to 36 miles (20 to 58 km). Along with the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound, it is a constituent part of the Salish Sea. Read more here and here. Explore more Point Roberts here: