Bellingham Bay is a bay located on the northern Pacific coast of Washington state in the United States. It is separated from the Strait of Georgia on the west by the Lummi Peninsula, Portage Island, and Lummi Island. It is bordered on the east by Bellingham, Washington, to the south-east by the Chuckanut Mountains, and to the south by Samish Bay. The Nooksack River empties into the bay, as does Whatcom Creek.
Bellingham Bay is named for Sir William Bellingham, who was controller of the storekeeper's account for the Royal Navy at the time that Britons under the command of George Vancouver visited the bay in June 1792. The first European entry of the bay was by the Spanish schooner Santa Saturnina under José María Narváez, during the 1791 expedition of Francisco de Eliza. Narváez named it Seno Gaston.
Parts of the bay are polluted by mercury from the Georgia-Pacific pulp mill that has been on the bay since 1965, but is currently undergoing plans for clean-up.
Famous quotes containing the word bay:
“Three miles long and two streets wide, the town curls around the bay ... a gaudy run with Mediterranean splashes of color, crowded steep-pitched roofs, fishing piers and fishing boats whose stench of mackerel and gasoline is as aphrodisiac to the sensuous nose as the clean bar-whisky smell of a nightclub where call girls congregate.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)