Sandwith Homestead at San Juan Island National Historical Park
The Sandwith Homestead is a 5.2-acre historic site in the northwest of San Juan Island within San Juan Island National Historical Park. The site is significant as the location of a late-nineteenth-century homestead farm and subsistence orchard, settled and farmed by Isaac Sandwith from 1875 to 1902. Situated on the lower slopes of Young Hill near English Camp, the Sandwith Homestead consists of the core of the original homestead, including the home site and a remnant fruit orchard. Contributing
features include the remnant orchard, as well as several stone features and artifacts scattered
throughout the site. The orchard contains 13 contributing cultivated fruit trees and 23 compatible new fruit trees. The
contributing trees include varieties of pear, apple, cherry, plum, and apricot. Their layout reveals a grid
with 30-foot spacing, with rows oriented along the contour lines of the hill. The oldest surviving tree in
the orchard, a pear that dates to around 1875, as well as some of the older cherries and an apple, exhibit classic characteristics of a nineteenth-century orchard. At least three of the fruit varieties, a Ben Davis apple and two pears, one a Flemish Beauty and the other a White Doyenne, are historic varieties that are unusual today.
U.S. National Park Service
Permission must be secured from the individual copyright owners to reproduce any copyrighted materials contained within this website. Digital assets without any copyright restrictions are public domain.