Discovery Bay

Vancouver named Port Discovery for his ship when he anchored here on May 2, 1792, but the Spanish had been using the bay for a year. They had already named it Puerto de Quadra, for Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, their naval commander at San Blas, and in 1791 Francisco de Eliza moved his expedition here from Esquimalt and sent his pilots out to chart the San Juan Islands and the mainland shore. Vancouver's ships lay here under repair while his boats went out and found Port Townsend and Admiralty Inlet.

What the plaque says

Discovery Bay On May 2, 1792. The intrepid English explorer, Captain George Vancouver, in search of a Northwest Passage, sailed his sloop Discovery and the armed tender Chatham down the Strait of Juan de Fuca and into this sheltered harbor. This bay Vancouver named Port Discovery for his ship, and the small island guarding the entrance he appropriately called Protection Island while at anchor here Vancouver set out in small boats for further exploration of this vicinity and discovered nearby the harbor of Port Townsend, so named by him for the Marquis of Townshend.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ebey's Landing — 13 mi
  A bluff trail above the beach where, in August 1857, a Kake raiding party came ashore to answer the shelling of their camp at Port Gamble the year before.
• Old Man House Park — 27 mi
  An acre of beach on Agate Passage where the largest winter house on the coast stood until the government burned it in 1870.
• Deception Pass — 28 mi
  A tide race between Whidbey and Fidalgo islands that fooled George Vancouver, and the 1935 bridge that finally tied Whidbey to the mainland.

More markers nearby

• Spanish Explorers — 21 mi
• Deception Pass — 27 mi