From two to four days of every week during the summer months, a hidden bay on the south side of Lopez Island is full of sleeping fishermen. They are gillnetters who spend their nights drifting over a reef near Iceberg Point. One of the best known spots for commercial fishing, its yield of sockeyes prior to 1921 supported two canneries at Richardson and made it the most important trading center in San Juan County at the turn of the century.
Times have changed, and today’s catch is delivered to packers, large company boats calling early each morning at Mackaye Harbor (*), more than half a mile to the southeast.
After the fish are unloaded, sorted and tallied, the fishermen move off, usually to solitary anchorages where their slumber is least likely to be interrupted. Those who moor at wharves risk being wakened by gossiping oldsters swapping yarns about their haul or tramping heavy-footed along the planks with loads of groceries brought from parked cars.
Three crude landings consisting of catwalks terminating in a series of floats are maintained by the canneries. Two also have fish buyers’ barges, where ice can be obtained or a phone call placed.
This season nine canneries are receiving the catch from Iceberg Point and approximately 100 gillnetters are operating out of Mackaye Harbor. As many as 114 vessels have worked out of there in a season, with 14 buyers represented.
The harbor is at its liveliest between 4 and 4:30 a.m. (or somewhat later as the days shorten). Fishing hours for gillnets are from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. standard time, but daylight is the governing factor. This fish are unlikely to “gill” when they can see the 1,000-foot nets.
Some gillnetters operate in the vicinity during the entire season until October 1. Purse seiners, who are allowed to fish from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. have a more flexible schedule. Many arrive after Alaska runs have ended. However, at least 40 of the big craft were fishing off Iceberg early in July.
Fishermen were counting upon 1961 as a heavy year in the four-year sockeye cycle. Early in June gillnetters at Mackaye Harbor (*) were gloating over catches of 160 salmon in a single set of the gill net or 1,000 pounds of fish in a night – not bad for a man unaided except by his wife or young son.
A good many are residents of Lopez and can climb into their cars and drive home to do their sleeping. Others are from Shaw Island and more distant places.
“I wasted 20 years of my life until I moved here,” observed one Lopez Islander.
Among the gillnetters invariably are to be found some teachers. The season opened with the tragic death of a young educator, James Bottoms of Lopez, who just had completed five years of university study and was to have taught this fall. On the foggy windy night of June 25 he fell overboard while putting out his net.
Life on a packer is something like a merry-go-round. The vessel picks up fish from purse seiners and gillnetters in four or five buys and makes a quick round trip to leave the load in Bellingham or Anacortes and return in time to receive the next haul at 8 p.m.
Only one cannery is operating this season in the San Juans, Jackson’s at Argyle on San Juan Island.
The first cannery in the archipelago opened at Friday Harbor in 1891, and that same year Lopez Island became an important supplier of salmon with two traps, one near Fisherman Bay and the other on Long Island, southwest of Richardson.
Eventually five traps were constructed in the immediate vicinity and some record catches of sockeyes were taken at Iceberg Point and Long Island.
Prior to this, Richardson (named for George S. Richardson who founded the community in 1874) boasted a salmon saltery started by T.P. Hodgson, who arrived seven years after the pioneer settler and was extremely successful in attracting Indians to trade fish at his store. Because of the small but wonderfully productive reef close by, passing tribesmen had been camping in the cove each summer for centuries.
After the traps and commercial fishermen moved in, more than a million fish were caught near Richardson in 1901, and the industry employed 400 fishermen. Thousands of fish that year had to be dumped because of insufficient means of preserving them.
Hodgson, who had formed a partnership with William Graham, salted 600 barrels of salmon before the supply of salt and cooperage materials was exhausted.
Soon afterward the partners erected the Salmon Bank cannery on the point at the pass between Lopez and Charles Islands. The Hidden Inlet Packing Co., owned by Fred Comieu, built a second cannery in a small cove directly opposite Hodgson’s store.
During this period of activity, which reached its high point in 1913, Mackaye Harbor became the base of trap operations for the Astoria and Puget Sound Canning Co., which kept its pile drivers and net years at this inner bay.
One of the problems in canning fish at Richardson was the lack of an ample water supply. Six wells were on the Hodgson and Graham property, yet the company had to bring barge-loads of water from Blakely Island.
Salmon Bank cannery and the other Hodgson enterprises were purchased in 191(6?) by Ira D. Lundy, Seattle councilman. In anticipation of a tremendous run of sockeyes expected the following year.
It did not materialize because the 1913 slide at Hells Gate on the Fraser River interrupted the spawning cycle. This was a calamity for fish packing in the San Juans and many ventures collapsed.
Salmon Bank cannery struggled on until 1921 when a terrific fire consumed the entire installation. Hidden Inlet was discontinued soon thereafter and, in 1925, the regular freight boat ceased to call at Richardson.
With fish traps outlawed in 1932, salmon canning gradually was centralized in the hands of large mainland companies and methods of receiving the fish were modernized.
Richardson’s busy canneries were gone and, with them, the picturesque Chinese crews.
No longer did farms drive in to exchange their produce on the dock.
The hotel was torn down, the bakery, creamer, slaughterhouse, barbershop and pool hall disappeared.
Only the mercantile company was left.
Oliver Lundy, who took over this establishment from his father, probably does his biggest business today at the oil dock, supplying fuel for the boats in the harbor of sleeping fishermen.
BELOW A PICTURE OF RICHARDSON: Richardson, a village on the southern shore of Lopez Island, was an active commercial fishing base early in the century when this rare photograph was taken. In the upper center of the picture can be seen the old Hidden Inlet Packing Co. At the upper left, the sprawling white building is the Salmon Bank cannery. Today, nothing remains of the Hidden Inlet buildings, and only a flat expanse of concrete marks where the Salmon Bank cannery once operated. The present day oil dock, Lundy’s store and Mackaye Harbor would be at the right of the picture. Photo courtesy of Miss Adelia Chadwick.
(*Transcribers note: Not Mackaye Harbor, but Barlow Bay. Also, note that canneries weren’t built until 1913!).