Washington
State Juan de Fuca Chapter
Washington
State Juan de Fuca Chapter
¿QUIÉN FUE JUAN DE FUCA? Juan de Fuca (Ioannis Fokas) or
Apostolos Valerianos was born in the 16th century at the village of Valerianos,
on the island of Kefalonia in Greece. At a very early age he became a merchant
shipman and sought his fortune all over the Mediterranean, eventually winding
up in Spain. He set sail for the New World hoping to find a Northwest Passage
after passing through the Straits of Magellan and sailing up the Pacific coast
of the Americas.
He believed he had found a Northwest Passage when he passed through what would
become the strait bearing his name and traveled inward into Puget Sound. His
reports back to the Spanish Crown set off a flurry of expeditions by Spain and
her Western European competitors, each hoping to gain advantage over the others
by occupying the crucial inlet to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Two hundred years later, the intense interest of United States Presidents John
Adams and Thomas Jefferson in finding a Northwest Passage to further commerce
and communications caused them to order and fund the journeys of Meriwether
Lewis and William Clark. It was only after Lewis and Clark had explored and
mapped the region that all talk of such a Northwest Passage was definitively
put to rest.
At the end of his journeys to the coast of the Pacific Northwest, Juan de Fuca returned to Spain where he died in obscurity. His grave as well as his notes have been lost to history.
Last updated: 6-26-03
Maintained by: Bridget Yaden