A history of Point Roberts,
since 1846
Postcards, papers and photographs of Point Roberts from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗The area around the southern Tsawwassen Peninsula was a favored fishing spot for several Coast Salish groups. The first Europeans to see Point Roberts were members of the 1791 expedition of Francisco de Eliza. The maps produced from Eliza's explorations depicted Point Roberts as "Isla de Cepeda" or "Isla de Zepeda." In 1792, the British expedition of George Vancouver and the Spanish expedition of Dionisio Alcalá Galiano encountered one another near Point Roberts. In the morning of June 13, 1792, the two ships under Galiano sailed into Boundary Bay and verified Point Roberts was not an island, which was thus renamed Punta Cepeda. They then sailed around Point Roberts and immediately encountered HMS Chatham, the second ship of Vancouver's expedition. The two parties made contact and agreed to share information and work together in mapping the Strait of Georgia.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Point Roberts’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
0 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewBoundary monument at Point Robert…, 1861: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Famous people close to Point Roberts
See all 17 →
Point Roberts, decade by decade
1990s
1 historic place in Point Roberts
1 place in Point Roberts is on the National Register of Historic Places, the country’s official list of buildings and places worth saving.
Where they are
When they were listed
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Boundary monument at Point Roberts - Treaty of Washington June 15th 1846 (1861) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom Wikimedia Commons (2) and the Library of Congress (4). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.