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The name
The cape was named for a Basque commissioner of 1794
The cape was named after the Basque Don José Manuel de Álava, born in Vitoria in January 1743, for his role as commissioner during the solution of the conflict of Nootka in 1794.
Westernmost
At low tide the cape reaches the westernmost point in the country
Cape Alava is the westernmost point in the contiguous United States, at a longitude of 124° 44′ 11.8″ W. That is measured at low tide, walking out to the west side of Tskawahyah Island. Cape Flattery is very close, at 124° 43′ 54.7″ W.
The Hojun Maru
A rice ship drifted for 14 months and landed here in 1834
In early 1834 a mastless and rudderless Japanese rice transport ship, the Hojun Maru, made landfall at Cape Alava after drifting for 14 months on the Pacific Ocean. It was supposed to bring rice to Edo, but a large storm had broken it and blown it off course. Only three of its crew were still alive. The youngest was Otokichi.
The loop
A 3-mile boardwalk leads to the cape, near a buried village
The cape lies within Olympic National Park and the Makah Indian Reservation, at the end of a 3-mile boardwalk hike from a ranger station. The Cape Alava Trail was designated a National Recreation Trail in 1981. It is part of the 9.5 mile Ozette Loop, which also takes in Sand Point. Nearby, a mudslide buried part of the Makah village of Ozette, and more than 55,000 artifacts were recovered.
The castaways
The three survivors were briefly enslaved, then taken to Fort Vancouver
The three survivors were looked after and briefly enslaved by the Makah people before being taken to Fort Vancouver. In 1997 a delegation from Mihama came to Ozette to commemorate the souls of the three Japanese sailors whose ship ran aground in the area in 1834.
In this plan
It is one of the stops on this plan.
More stories from this trip idea
The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Cape Alava and the Wikipedia article Ozette Indian Village Archeological Site, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.