Discreet 24/7 Biohazard Remediation in Roche Harbor, WA

Roche Harbor is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) on the northwest side of San Juan Island in San Juan County, facing Haro Strait and the Canada–United States border.

The harbor was named for Lieutenant Richard Roche of the British Royal Marines, who scouted the area for an ideal site for the British encampment during the joint military occupation of the San Juan Islands.

Long before that, Roche Harbor was part of a thriving Coast Salish community known as whelaalk (WH'LEHL-kluh), which in the mid-1800s had 10 large longhouses.

British Royal Marines stationed nearby during the joint occupation (1860–1872) were the first to quarry and process limestone at Roche Harbor.

In 1886 Tacoma lawyer John S. McMillin established the Tacoma and Roche Harbor Lime Company, which became the largest lime producer in the Pacific Northwest, producing almost 300,000 barrels of lime a year at its 1904 peak.

At its height, Roche Harbor was a self-contained company town of more than 800 residents, with 13 lime kilns and 15 quarries, its own hotel, post office, school, general store, church and power plants — and workers were paid in company scrip, a practice that lasted until the town was sold in 1956.

McMillin built the 20-room Hotel de Haro in 1886 around the original Hudson's Bay Company post, and the hotel remains in operation today as the centerpiece of the resort.

The McMillin family is buried in a distinctive mausoleum near the village known as Afterglow Vista.

Lime production ended and in 1956 the Reuben J. Tarte family bought Roche Harbor — 4,000 acres and 12 miles of coastline — and transformed the company town into a boating resort with a marina and an airstrip.

The Roche Harbor Historic District, 140 acres preserving the lime-era village, was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 29, 1977.