Seeking vampires, werewolves and the sasquatch: A short history of tourists

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, July 22, 2026

FROM THE ACIDIFIED ocean to the melting glaciers, the Olympic Peninsula has always been a tourist magnet.

The first tourists were stone-age hunters who’d crossed the Bering Land Bridge sometime in the last ice age.

These hunters made it to Sequim, where a spear point was embedded in a mastodon rib that was radiocarbon-dated to be 13,800 years old. Which made it evidence of the oldest barbecue on the Olympic Peninsula.

Life was good. Too good to last.

The mastodons, mammoths and the rest of the Pleistocene megafauna were extinct shortly after the arrival of the tourist hunters.

It could be just a coincidence, but the further back in history we go, the less we really know.

The Chinese may have been the next tourists to visit the Olympic Peninsula.

They told of a land east of Japan called, “Fousang” where a Chinese junk, driven off course by a storm, landed in 219 B.C.

They started a rumor about the legendary Strait of Anian, said to separate Asia from North America and provide a water route from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean.

Returning to Venice in 1295 from his journey to China, Marco Polo brought a map of the Strait of Anian, igniting a search that would last for the next 500 years.

Sir Francis Drake may or may not have been another early tourist to visit the Olympic Peninsula while on his round-the-world cruise, looting treasure from the Spanish that the Spanish had stolen from the Incas and Aztecs.

In 1579, Drake sailed north up the Pacific Coast to 48 degrees North, claiming land for Queen Elizabeth and burying 17 tons of treasure along the way until he was lost in a frozen fog and went home.

The Strait of Juan de Fuca was named after another tourist who may or may not have been here.

The Greek tourist Apostolos Valerianus, who went by the name of Juan de Fuca, claimed that in 1592 he found an inlet on the Pacific coast in which he sailed for 20 days in a land rich in gold, silver and pearls.

The Spanish, English, Russian and American tourists spent the next 200 years looking for this mythical Northwest Passage, an imaginary shortcut across the continent to the treasures of the Orient.

It wasn’t until July of 1787 that the British tourist Captain Charles Barkley discovered the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

He failed to mention any gold, silver or pearls.

In July of 1790, a Spanish tourist, Captain Manuel Quimper, discovered the real treasure of the Strait of Juan de Fuca when he purchased some 100-pound salmon off the mouth of the Elwha River.

This set off an invasion of tourists that have been coming here looking for these mythical fish ever since.

Our pioneer forefathers told tall tales of an inland lake with a bunchgrass prairie and Indians hunting buffalo somewhere up the Elwha.

Hearing this, the Press Expedition of 1898 wasted no time in buying green lumber from the pioneer forefathers to build a boat to push upriver to this mythical lake, only to emerge starving and shipwrecked on the Quinault River months later.

Later tourists were told of the great mineral wealth, gold, coal and petroleum that was just waiting to be discovered in the Olympics.

Fortunately, that was another myth that saved the land from the effects of mining.

Telling tall tales to tourists is a proud tradition on the Olympic Peninsula.

We may not have gold, silver and pearls, but the vampires, werewolves and the Sasquatch are out there just waiting to be discovered.

Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist.” He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.