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Whidbey Island (historical spellings Whidby, Whitbey, or Whitby) is the largest of the islands composing Island County, Washington, in the United States. (The other large island is Camano Island, east of Whidbey.) Whidbey is about north of Seattle, and lies between the Olympic Peninsula and the I-5 corridor of western Washington. The island forms the northern boundary of Puget Sound. It is home to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. Whidbey Island is home to 58,211 residents (according to the 2000 census),〔(Island County, Washington and its subdivisions ) United States Census Bureau〕 also known as Whidbey Islanders. An estimated 29,000 of Whidbey Islanders live in rural locations. Whidbey Island is approximately long (from the extreme north to extreme south), and wide, with ,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Island County Assessor )〕 making it the 40th largest island in the United States. It is ranked as the fourth longest and fourth largest island in the contiguous United States, behind Padre Island, Texas (the world's longest barrier island); Long Island (a fact disputed by residents); and Isle Royale, Michigan. In the state of Washington, it is the largest island, followed by Orcas Island. == History == Whidbey Island was once inhabited by members of the Lower Skagit, Swinomish, Suquamish, Snohomish and other Native American tribes. The first known European sighting of Whidbey Island was during the 1790 Spanish expedition of Manuel Quimper and Gonzalo López de Haro on the ''Princesa Real''. The island was fully explored in 1792 by Captain George Vancouver. In May of that year, Royal Navy officers and members of Vancouver's expedition, Joseph Whidbey and Peter Puget, began to map and explore the areas of what would later be named Puget Sound. After Whidbey circumnavigated the island in June 1792, Vancouver named the island in his honor. The first known overnight stay on Whidbey Island by a non-native American was made on May 26, 1840 by a Catholic missionary during travel across Puget Sound. Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, commander of the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–1842, sailed the USS ''Vincennes'' into Penn Cove in 1841. There he found the largest Native settlement on Puget Sound and noted that a Catholic mission had been started with a fenced garden. Wilkes named the lower cove Holmes Harbor, after his assistant surgeon, Silas Holmes. In 1850, Colonel Isaac N. Ebey became the first permanent white settler on Whidbey Island, claiming a square mile (2.6 km²) of prairie with a southern shoreline on Admiralty Inlet. Even though he was farming potatoes and wheat on his land, he was also the postmaster for Port Townsend, Washington and rowed a boat daily across the inlet in order to work at the post office there. On August 11, 1857, Colonel Ebey was murdered and beheaded by Haida who traveled from the Queen Charlotte Islands when he was 39 years old. Ebey was slain in proxy-retaliation for the killing of a Haida chief at Port Gamble. Fort Ebey, named for the Colonel, was established in 1942 on the west side of the central part of the island, just northwest of Coupeville. Admiralty Head Lighthouse is located in this area, on the grounds of Fort Casey State Park. The area around Coupeville is the federally protected Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve, named in honor of Isaac Ebey. In 1984, the island was the site of a violent encounter between law enforcement and white nationalist and organized crime leader Robert Jay Mathews. A large shootout occurred between Mathews and FBI agents in which Mathews was killed in a house fire. Mathews' followers have since gathered on the island at the location where he was killed by FBI agents on the anniversary of his death to commemorate it. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Whidbey Island」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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