Qualla: Sumas–Huntingdon Border Crossing

Sumas–Huntingdon Border Crossing: Introduction

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wbaron, CC BY-SA 3.0. The old United States customs house at Sumas no longer sits at the border. It stands a few blocks south, at 131 Harrison Street, because in the late 1980s somebody decided that 714 tons of ornate brickwork was worth saving. Rather than knock the building down to make room for a replacement, crews jacked it up and moved it intact. That decision says something about this stretch of the 49th parallel, where Washington State Route 9 becomes British Columbia Highway 11: almost nothing here has ever been thrown away, only shifted sideways and repurposed. The crossing itself has been continuously in business, in one form or another, since the 1890s.

Image: Wbaron | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sumas–Huntingdon Border Crossing: A Line Across a Flat Place

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wbaron, CC BY-SA 3.0. The boundary was settled in 1846, but decades passed before there was much on either side of it worth guarding. What made this particular spot matter was geometry. The land here is dead flat — the Halkomelem name behind Sumas is usually rendered as "land without trees" or "big fl...

Image: Wbaron | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sumas–Huntingdon Border Crossing: Customs from a Front Room

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wbaron, CC BY-SA 3.0. Canadian enforcement began as one man working out of his own house. When the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush of the late 1850s pulled prospectors north, police reported goods crossing freely with nobody to collect duty on them. John Musselwhite became the first customs officer at Upper S...

Image: Wbaron | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sumas–Huntingdon Border Crossing: Opium, Diamonds, and the Closed Door

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wbaron, CC BY-SA 3.0. The railway changed the stakes. In 1891 the Bellingham Bay and British Columbia Railroad reached the line and met the CP, and almost immediately the crossing became one of the busiest smuggling routes on the western border. Opium moved through. So did diamonds. So did people — Ch...

Image: Wbaron | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sumas–Huntingdon Border Crossing: Four Buildings and a Move

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wbaron, CC BY-SA 3.0. The American side has cycled through its architecture with some inventiveness. Customs rented space from 1907; when the road through Huntingdon was relocated in 1913 and left the office awkwardly stranded, a new station went up on the east side of Cherry Street the following year...

Image: Wbaron | CC BY-SA 3.0