Lime Kiln Point is a 42-acre (17 ha) state park and the site of a historic limestone quarry and kiln on the western shore of San Juan Island, about 6 miles (10 km) south of Roche Harbor and six miles west of Friday Harbor, Washington. The point is named after the lime kilns built in the 1860s to produce mortar and plaster from limestone. Francisco de Eliza, a Spanish explorer who charted parts of the Salish Sea in 1791, gave the islands their name. Of the 428 islands in San Juan County exposed at high tide, about 175 are named. The three largest are Orcas with 36,432 acres (14,744 ha), San Juan with 35,448 acres (14,345 ha) and Lopez with 18,847 acres (7,627 ha). The islands are formed by bedrock scoured and eroded by glaciers during the Pleistocene. At Lime Kiln Point, the rock formation known as the Deadman Bay Volcanics consists mainly of pillow basalt, breccia, and tuff with interbedded limestone. It is uncertain how this juxtaposition occurred, but the limestones may have been drawn into the basalt by high-velocity turbidity currents or by churning as the lavas flowed across carbonate sediment accumulations. High-pressure metamorphism during the Late Cretaceous, about 100 million years ago, converted the limestones to aragonite.

The San Juan Island archipelago has an archaeological record of human habitation dating from at least 14,000 years ago. Artifacts and human remains suggest established villages existed by 9,000 years ago. Historically, Coast Salish peoples lived in permanent winter villages of plank houses made from western red cedar. Families undertook seasonal hunting and gathering. In spring, women harvested and prepared camas bulbs, sometimes cultivated as an important food source. Men repaired fishing nets and made hooks for halibut, rockfish, lingcod and other species. In late spring deer were hunted, sometimes with nets, then clubbed or speared. In early summer families moved to fishing camps to exploit the immense salmon runs, using reef nets especially along the south-west side of San Juan Island. The islands are part of the overlapping traditional territories of several Coast Salish peoples, including the Nooksack, Lummi, Klallam, Saanich, Samish, and Songhees. European explorers and traders arrived in the 18th century. In the 19th century the Hudson’s Bay Company established trading posts such as Fort Langley in Halkomelem territory and Fort Victoria in Lekwungan territory. An influx of gold miners and homesteaders in the late 19th century permanently disrupted the Coast Salish’s traditional lifestyle, displacing the tribes and introducing diseases.

From 1860 until the 1920s San Juan County was the principal lime-producing area in Washington state. Small industrial kilns were built near limestone sources with readily accessible coal or wood for firing, and close to deep-water landings such as Lime Kiln Point. The process of heating limestone to produce lime has been used since ancient times. The San Juan Islands were ideal for manufacturing and transporting lime. Large deposits of high-quality limestone lay near the shoreline, with good deep-water harbors protected from prevailing winds. The limestone was quarried and shunted downhill by gravity into the top of the kilns, which were fired with abundant high-temperature-producing old-growth Douglas fir. The lime was drawn from the bottom of the kilns, packed in barrels and transferred to warehouses built on or near wharves. Fleets of sailing ships and steamers regularly transported the lime to cities in southern Puget Sound, where it was in demand as a building material and as an ingredient for several growing regional industries, including smelting and papermaking. Read more here and here. Explore more of Lime Kiln Point and San Juan Island here: