Qualla: Sekiu, Washington

Sekiu, Washington: Introduction

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jon Roanhaus, CC BY-SA 3.0. The 2020 census counted twenty-four people in Sekiu. On a good July morning the boat ramp can move more bodies than that before the coffee has cooled. This is a village that breathes seasonally: a scatter of cabins, docks and motels along the west side of Clallam Bay, looking out across the Strait of Juan de Fuca toward the low blue ridge of Vancouver Island. Across the water on the bay's east shore sits its twin, the community of Clallam Bay. Between them they account for most of what passes for a town along this stretch of Washington's far northwest coast.

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Image: Jon Roanhaus | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sekiu, Washington: A Mark on a Chart

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Weldon Kennedy from London, UK, CC BY 2.0. Before Sekiu was a place on land, it was a point on paper. The name first surfaces as "Sekou Pt" on Henry Kellett's chart of 1846, inked by a Royal Navy surveyor mapping a coast he would never live on. Settlement followed three decades later. In 1879 J.A. Martin arrived and set a...

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Image: Weldon Kennedy from London, UK | CC BY 2.0

Sekiu, Washington: What the Strait Provides

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Weldon Kennedy from London, UK, CC BY 2.0. The fishing never stopped here. It simply changed hands, moving from canneries and cold storage to charter boats and trailered skiffs. What fills Sekiu now is the water immediately offshore, where salmon, halibut, lingcod and rockfish hold along the ledges with the rest of the bo...

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Image: Weldon Kennedy from London, UK | CC BY 2.0

Sekiu, Washington: Ninety-Five Inches

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ron Clark, CC0. The weather here is less dramatic than the numbers make it sound. Average temperatures run from roughly 41 degrees Fahrenheit in winter to 58 in summer, a narrow band held close by an ocean that refuses to let the thermometer swing. What the ocean does deliver is rain: about 95 i...

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Image: Ron Clark | CC0

Sekiu, Washington: The Road That Runs Out

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Leszczynski from Washington, DC, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. Highway 112 is the thread that holds this coast together, and it is not in a hurry. It hugs the strait, climbs over headlands, and drops back to sea level at each bay, delivering drivers to Clallam Bay and then to Sekiu, and then continuing west until the pavement reaches Neah Ba...

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Image: John Leszczynski from Washington, DC, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

Sekiu, Washington: The Runway Above the Water

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dicklyon, CC BY-SA 4.0. A mile west of the village, Sekiu Airport lays a 2,997-foot lighted runway across a shelf 350 feet above the strait, with a visual approach indicator to help pilots pick it out against the timber. It is owned by the Port of Port Angeles and carries the identifier 11S. For a commu...

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Image: Dicklyon | CC BY-SA 4.0