Juan de Fuca

The strait carries the name of a man who may never have sailed it. In April 1596 the English merchant Michael Lok met an old Greek pilot in Venice who went by Juan de Fuca, born Apostolos Valerianos, and who claimed to have found a passage near this latitude for Spain in 1592. Samuel Purchas printed Lok's note in 1625, and no Spanish record of the voyage has been found. Charles Barkley put the name on his chart in 1787, sailing the Imperial Eagle with his wife Frances, eighteen that summer.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Glines Canyon Spillway Overlook — 7.4 mi
  A viewpoint built on the spillway of a 210-foot dam that is no longer there, above a valley that was a reservoir for most of a century.
• Hoh Rain Forest — 25 mi
  Twelve to fourteen feet of rain a year, spruce standing in rows on the logs that nursed them, and the elk Theodore Roosevelt set the first park lands aside for.

More markers nearby

• Spanish Explorers — 8.6 mi