Prior to 1920, Japanese American farmers from Vashon Island used a variety of docks to transport their produce, via the swarm of steamships crossing Puget Sound popularly known as the “Mosquito Fleet.” With the rise of the north-end ferry service to Seattle, however, Vashon Heights became the most popular transit point for strawberry farmers like the Matsuda and Fujioka families. The Mukai family shipped its strawberries in barrels for freezing...

From the ferry landing, Vashon Highway SW ascends on a winding grade to the crest of the island. Far below, Puget Sound glints in the sun. To the east are the tumbled Cascades, broken by peaks and punctuated by the white crowns of Mount Rainier and Mount Baker. On the west is the Olympic Range. Continuing south, the highway rolls past berry fields, orchards and poultry farms. Patches of woodland...

The creek rises in central Vashon Island and flows southeast into Quartermaster Harbor. It was named for A. W. Judd, a farmer and retired Methodist minister who lived on Quartermaster Harbor north of the creek. Somewhere along the banks was said to be a cache of buried treasure. Lars Hanson, logging here in 1877, married an Indian girl to whom he gave his savings, $800 in gold, with instructions to...

This scattered community was established in 1892 as the site of Vashon College, a co-ed preparatory school that was destroyed by fire in 1912. The town was founded by Mrs. M. F. Hatch, either for her birthplace in England, Burton-In-Kendall, or after the town she formerly lived in in Illinois. Near the college, in a large park-like section, Baptists convened for an annual summer assembly of their Young People's Society....

Points of Interest

Burton Community Church

Burton Masonic Hall

South of Burton, the highway follows the winding shore, ascending high sand bluffs with an ever-widening panorama of small bays. Here, the country becomes rougher in character, broken by huge thinly timbered ravines. Shawnee House embodies in its construction, design, ownership, and history an urban affluence which found its expression in the building of homes on the beaches of Puget Sound in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The...