Point Roberts: The U.S. Town You Reach by Driving Through Canada, Washington

On a map, Point Roberts looks like a mistake. It's a small square of land, about five square miles, hanging off the bottom of a Canadian peninsula south of Vancouver. It belongs to the state of Washington, but it doesn't touch the rest of the United States anywhere on land. It traces back to a single straight line. In the 1840s, the U.S. and Britain were negotiating where to draw the border across the Pacific Northwest. On June 15, 1846, they signed the Oregon Treaty, agreeing that the boundary would follow the 49th parallel west to the coast. The southern tip of the Tsawwassen Peninsula happened to dip just below that line. Later, as the Boundary Commission surveyed the border, British officials realized that Point Roberts would be left as an isolated piece of the United States. The British raised it, but Point Roberts stayed American. Today the border cuts right across the top of the peninsula. Along Roosevelt Way, the town's northernmost street, some Canadian cul-de-sacs run up to the line from the other side, with just a curb separating the two countries. At the western end, Boundary Marker No. 1, a granite obelisk from the 1860s, marks where the land border between the two countries meets the sea. Life here runs through Canada. To drive to the nearest U.S. town, Point Roberts residents cross into Canada at a checkpoint at the north end of town, drive about 25 miles through British Columbia, then cross back into the U.S. near Blaine. The town has its own primary school, but older students cross the border twice a day by bus to attend school in Blaine. Point Roberts has always been closely tied to its Canadian neighbors. Icelandic settlers arrived in the late 1800s. In the 1950s, Canadians began building summer homes, and the summer population still swells far beyond the 1,191 year-round residents counted in the 2020 census, most of the visitors coming from Canada. Over the years, there have been proposals to change its status: talk of secession in 1949, and in 1952 a Canadian regional plan suggesting it become an international park or be leased to Canada. That dependence has a cost when the border tightens. During the COVID-19 pandemic, cross-border travel restrictions left the town isolated, and a temporary ferry was set up to Blaine. More recently, rising U.S.–Canada tensions led many Canadians to boycott U.S. destinations, Point Roberts included, cutting into the local businesses that rely on them.