Hood Canal

The board's last clause gives both names and settles on the wrong word. Vancouver wrote Hood's Channel in his journal and Hood's Canal on his charts, and the federal naming board later fixed Hood Canal as official for a sixty-mile glacial fjord that is no canal at all. The Skokomish, descendants of the Twana people whose nine villages lined these shores before the 1855 Treaty of Point No Point moved them to the reservation at its southern bend, call it tuwaduq sidaqʷ, the Twana people's saltwater.

What the plaque says

Hood Canal While charting Northwest waters for the British Admiralty in May, 1792, Captain George Vancouver anchored his two ships in Discovery Bay for repairs. Taking three small well-stocked boats he set forth to view more closely the surrounding region and found a narrow inlet to the south which proved to be both extensive and picturesque. After sailing its entire length, he retraced his course to resume his comprehensive charting of the coast. In honor of the Right Honorable Lord Hood, Vancouver named the newly-discovered inlet Hood's Channel; known to all as Hood Canal.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge — 27 mi
  A delta given back to the tide in 2009, and named for the Nisqually fisherman who was arrested more than fifty times for fishing his own river.