Hotel de Haro

 

Hotel de Haro is part of Roche Harbor Village, a historic seaside resort located on San Juan Island.

The resort, on scenic Roche Harbor, is surrounded by formal gardens. Diverse accommodations include luxury rentals, quaint cabins and the historic hotel.

Roche Harbor Resort has a well-known marina, offers boat and kayak rentals, whale-watching outings, and a floatplane dock. Other amenities include a spa, shops, a local distillery and a grocery store. The resort also offers a beautiful seaside pool, tennis and Bocce ball. Visitors have their choice of three restaurants or take the short drive to the nearby town of Friday Harbor.

In addition to the wonderful marine activities at your doorstop, the Roche Harbor Trail System offers ten miles of trails, including a short walk up the hill to an outdoor sculpture park. The trails allow you to find your way through woods, meadows and ponds. Check out the nearby off-leash dog park with separate areas for large and small dogs, or the disc golf course. Connect with the National Trail System that includes a climb to the top of 650-foot Mt. Young and an exploration of historic English Camp.

Discover the mysterious McMillin Memorial Mausoleum. McMillin, founder of the Hotel de Haro, was a stone mason and created an open-air monument with rotunda and a large round limestone table with eight chairs, symbolizing the McMillin family sitting around their dinner table. Family member’s ashes are placed in the chairs. Found along a trail across from the sculpture park, the Mausoleum can be accessed through an arch with the words “Afterglow Vista” etched into the stone. At the site, you can read about the symbolism associated with the rotunda, steps and columns.

Visitors to Roche Harbor are treated to a “colors ceremony” – a tradition since 1957. Just before sunset each night during the summer (early May through September 26), resort staff retire the flags of Roche Harbor, Washington State, Great Britain, Canada and the United States. The flags are lowered while a song plays, and then – before the American flag comes down – a cannon shot booms across the harbor.

The story of Roche Harbor began in 1787, when Captain Lopez de Haro and his crew became the first Europeans to sail in the San Juan Islands. Haro Strait, dividing the United States from Vancouver Island, along with the historic hotel, get their names from this Spanish explorer.

Development at Roche Harbor began when John S. McMillin, a Tacoma lawyer, discovered the richest and largest deposit of lime in the Northwest at Roche Harbor. By 1886, the Tacoma and Roche Harbor Lime Company became a huge business, supplying lime all across the West. 

McMillin built the 20-room Hotel de Haro with its one-foot-thick log walls, in 1886 around an original Hudson Bay Post.

Hotel de Haro's website reads: “Head into the lobby and ask the front desk to see the still exposed logs. By 1890, the company town had grown up around the magnificent hotel. It consisted of a completely modern lime factory, a barrel works, warehouse, docks, ships and piers, offices, company store, church, school, barns, and homes. In 1956, all 4,000 acres of Roche Harbor, with 12 miles of coastline, was sold to Reuben J. Tarte, a Seattle businessman. He and his family set about restoring the hotel … turning the area into a world class resort.”

You can find Ralph Munro’s video diary of Hotel de Haro and other special places in Washington as part of his “Favorite Places” series on TVW (My Favorite Places - TVW). The video is well-worth watching to see the beautiful setting of the Hotel de Haro. A transcript of the video follows:

My Favorite Places with Ralph Munro
...by Ralph Munro, courtesy TVW.org 

In this is a Hotel de Haro, located in Roche Harbor on San Juan Island.

 

This beautiful old hotel, named after the first Spanish explorers, was originally built around the Hudson Bay Company Trading Post and bunk house. 

 

 

In the mid 1800s, the British came here in search of lime used as a construction supplement, as well as for agricultural purposes. This town became the source of lime for the entire American West Coast.

 

 

And later an American from Tacoma built this beautiful old hotel. 

 

Today, this beautiful old hotel is the longest-continuing operating hotel in the State of Washington. 

 

It’s most certainly one of my favorite places. 

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