[click image to view larger]

Pearl Little Site

Status: Saved!

Year Listed: 1995

Location: San Juan Island, San Juan County

The Pearl Little archaeology site is well known in many Washington Slate preservation circles and was identified as an important site as early as the 1940s. The site is one of the few off-reservation sites to be continuously occupied by Native Americans until recently. The Pearl Little archaeological site was placed on the Washington Trust’s Most Endangered Places list in 1995 when then board member Nancy Larsen brought the property to the Washington Trust’s attention.

In 1996, the Lummi Tribe and local activists worked together with the San Juan County Conservancy to purchase and preserve the site, and the Washington Trust offered assistance with negotiating a settlement among all interested parties. In the following six years, the site and the land parcel were bought and sold by different investors, and eventually San Juan County put a moratorium on the creation of new subdivisions. In 2001, the Pearl little site was removed from the list as the moratorium would protect the location from development.

Since then, new owners of the property have shown good stewardship on the land parcel by working with all parties to make sure that significant elements of the landscape are preserved.

Read more from our “40 for 40” featured story from the Washington Trust’s 40th anniversary in 2016.