Vashon Island and More

                                                McNeil Island

                                       
                                               Ferry Terminal on Anderson Island

Since I mentioned before that I will write about many of places around here in Washington State Vashon Island is sort of between Seattle and Tacoma. Whether you go south from Seattle by water or north from Tacoma you will see Vashon Island.

Getting to Vashon Island other than by water is to go there by ferry. There are two ferries that will get you to Vashon. If you are in the Seattle area the ferry ride would come from West Seattle and in Tacoma the ferry goes from Pt. Defiance Park. Both rides take no more thirty minutes to get there.

Vashon Island is a place for older people to retire and for others to commute to Seattle or Tacoma. If you are bike rider Vashon Island is a great place to ride the ferry and ride around for a while. They do have public schools having elementary, middle school and high school.

I remember when I was in high school my parents, younger brother and myself we spent a weekend with other Gig Harbor Yacht Club members on Vashon Island. They have several inlets where you can stay at. I am sure in the early years boats would go into one of those inlets when a mighty storm come along in the Puget Sound. Vashon Island was discovered by explorer George Vancouver who named it after his very good friend James Vashon in 1792. The island is about thirty-seven square miles and the population censored in 2010 was just over ten thousand people. The island is slightly larger than Manhattan.  

 

The South Sound has several other islands around too. McNeil Island is one where the federal government had a prison from 1879 until 1981 and then state of Washington made it a prison for state prisoners until 2011. I have friends on Fox Island which is only about fifteen minutes west from Gig Harbor where you can drive over on a bridge. McNeil Island can be viewed on the west side of Fox Island. The general public can’t travel to McNeil Island without permission.  If you were watching the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay in 2016 you could see both Steilacoom to the south and McNeil Island in the background.

There are several other islands like Anderson that are not large either and can only be reached by ferry. It is the most southern island in Puget Sound and can be reached either by boat or ferry. Just like McNeil Island the ferry ride to Anderson goes from Steilacoom. The population for Anderson is around one thousand people.  

Like I say so many nice places to visit and life in the Puget Sound area; Gig Harbor my home town population increased when a second Narrows bridge was built and opened in July 2007. For more than a decade the traffic was really heavy with the one bridge. Often I had to take different routes depending how heavy the roads were on the Tacoma side. You do have to pay a toll that will run until 2030 to pay for the new bridge. I will write about the bridge and the history of it in the future along with the memories I have of it.  Over the years ahead the populations will increase but by how much depends on the roads and new bridges that will be built. Though larger than when I was a kid still a great place to live. Outside of Seattle and Tacoma places like Gig Harbor and Vashon Island are still small towns. The only way Vashon would have a large population if the state government decided it would be good to build a bridge instead of just ferry rides. At this point there are no plans for building a bridge and I hope it never does happen. I am sure the cost of a bridge would be very costly. Only happen if it was necessary.

I love the whole Puget Sound but I hope people want to visit and not live here. Come and see this lovely area.