Sheltered from the Pacific storms by the San Juan Islands and abundant with fish and game, the forests and the beaches of the Blaine area were for 3,000 years the realm of an ancient Salish coast tribe, known as the Semiahmoos, who lived in villages from Point Roberts, around Boundary Bay to the Semiahmoo Spit and around Birch Bay.

The coming of the white man, mainly trappers and explorers, had little impact on the tranquility of this peaceful place until "Gold Fever" struck.  By the mid 1800's, rooming houses and outfitting stores sprang up on the Spit and mainland bluffs, catering to international boundary surveyors and miners in search of gold along the Fraser River.  The area prospered until the gold rush ended in 1859.  But during the next two decades, homesteaders settled in the area and expanded the timber and fishing industry.  They began salting and barreling fish as early as 1876.  Soon after, in 1884, the city of Blaine was born, named after the Republican candidate for U.S. Presidency, James G. Blaine.

Ten years later in 1894, the     Alaska Packers Association (APA) established a major salmon cannery and boat repair facility at the tip of the Semiahmoo Spit.  Famous for its Star Fleet of three-masted sailing ships that carried the Alaska canned salmon to San Francisco, the cannery became a landmark.  By the turn of the century, the area bustled with workers and trade from five canneries, three lumber mills and several shingle mills.  Blaine was a major port of entry connected to the Great Northern Railroad.  The town was booming.  In 1916 Del Monte Foods purchased APA making it the largest wholly owned subsidiary of Del Monte until 1984.  With the opening of the Peace Arch monument as a gateway between Canada and United States in 1921 tourism also began to contribute to the city's economy.

But Blaine, like other communities in the area began to suffer with the combination of the Great Depression of the 1930's and local resource depletion.  Between 1934 and 1936 the large fish traps used by the canneries were outlawed by public initiative.  This seriously affected the economic viability of the local canneries.  Blaine's population began to decline from a peak of 2,289 in 1910 to 1,510 in 1950.  In many ways Blaine took on the appearance of many other small towns in the West which had lost their economic base.  While the City kept its fishing heritage alive, the economy of the area did not grow.

The end of World War II brought on a new prosperity tied to tourism as border towns began to boom overnight.  Canadians visiting America and Americans visiting Canada increased the auto traffic crossing the border at Blaine and other crossings. Despite the lower value of the Canadian dollar, the U.S./Canada border crossing at Blaine continues to be one of the busiest between the two countries.

Salmon canning became a thing of the past at Semiahmoo in 1964 but APA continued labeling cans there until 1974.  In that year the company moved its head offices to Bellevue, Washington and closed all operations but the boat repair yard, which continued until 1981.  In 1974 all the APA property in Semiahmoo was annexed by the city of Blaine and the area looked for new ways to revitalize its communities.  In 1979 a unique opportunity began to materialize when a development company began a 10 year drive to build a destination resort community at Semiahmoo. The development company began construction of an 800 slip marina.  The first phase consisted of 300 boat slips, a  general store and marine repair facilities.  Concurrently, construction began on a 20 acre county park at the neck of the Semiahmoo Spit which separates Semiahmoo Uplands from the tip of the Spit.  The park includes a museum, gift shop, office and multi-purpose building, which were all former Alaska Packers' bunkhouses, restored and relocated from the Spit.

In 1982, preliminary market research and concept planning was undertaken by the owners of Semiahmoo.  The results of this research supported the concept of combining the Uplands and Spit to create a major destination resort.  The concept drew on the attributes of the forested Uplands for land based recreation and living, and the Spit for marine and resort related activities.  It was a plan that would dramatically change the Semiahmoo Peninsula and seriously begin to build a new economy for the area.

(For more information about the history of Semiahmoo, pick up the book Ghost Camps and Boom Towns by JoAnn Roe.  Contact me for information on getting a copy).