How Fidalgo Bay got its name

By Trail Tales Docent Bruce McDanold

As the largest of bays on Fidalgo Island, Fidalgo Bay obviously derives its moniker from the island itself. All prior European explorers believed our Island was merely a peninsula so it was not given an English or Spanish name. It wasn't named until 1841 when the United States Exploring Expedition arrived and Lt. Charles Wilkes confirmed Native American information about an estuary forming the eastern shore (now the Swinomish Channel). He named the island Perry's Island after Oliver Hazard Perry, the American hero of the Battle of Lake Erie, 1813.
That name probably would have stuck except for a decision made by British Vice Admiral Sir Henry Kellett in 1847 when the British Admiralty reorganized their charts. Favoring "pro-English" or Spanish names over Wilkes' "pro-American" names, Kellett kept the name given by Vancouver to the Strait of Georgia. He then took the Spanish name for that same passage, the Gran Canal de Nuestra Senora del Rosario la Marinara, shortened it, and affixed it to next passage south: Rosario Strait.
That passage was originally charted by the Spanish as Canal de Fidalgo, after Salvador Fidalgo y Lopegarcia who was one of Spain's early explorers on the Northwest Pacific coast. Kellett, by this process, eventually removed the name given by Wilkes and bestowed the name Fidalgo to Perry's Island in honor of the Spanish explorer. Kellett's names persist to this day.