Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Near Portage Vashon, WA

Vashon is an unincorporated census-designated place (CDP) in King County that covers the whole of Vashon Island and Maury Island in Puget Sound, the largest island in the Sound south of Admiralty Inlet.

Captain George Vancouver named the island on May 28, 1792, for his friend James Vashon of the Royal Navy, while Maury Island was named in 1841 by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes for his officer William Lewis Maury.

Vashon and Maury Islands were once separate islands joined only at low tide, until local landowners built an earth isthmus in the 1910s that created the hamlet of Portage and tied the two into a single island.

The Vashon CDP had a population of 11,055 at the 2020 census, up from 10,624 in 2010.

The 2020 census counted 4,717 households and 5,636 housing units within the Vashon CDP.

The island has no fixed bridge and is reached only by Washington State Ferries and the King County Water Taxi, and islanders have repeatedly resisted bridge proposals to preserve its rural, isolated character.

Japanese American farmers began growing strawberries on Vashon in the 1890s, and grower Denichiro Mukai became renowned for barreling fresh berries for long-distance shipping, until the island's Japanese American population was forcibly removed to internment camps during World War II.

Vashon still holds a Strawberry Festival every July honoring that farming heritage, and the island is also known for its sheepdog trials and small organic farms.

Vashon College, one of the leading colleges in the region in its day, opened in the Burton community in 1892 and operated until it burned down in 1910.

Ski maker K2 Sports was long one of the island's major industrial employers before it moved its manufacturing overseas, leaving Pacific Research Laboratories as Vashon's largest manufacturer.