Point Roberts, Washington: the US town that only exists due a mistake made 180 years ago

News.com.au

21 hours ago

'If I want a pizza or sushi, I have to go to another country,' said Steve O'Neill.
'There are three million people right next door and some days I will walk down the beach and see no one.'
For Mr O'Neill life in Point Roberts is bucolic but full of absurdities. Perhaps the biggest of which is that this American outpost might not even exist today were it not for the thickness of a pencil – and potentially the thickness of the people using that pencil – almost 180 years ago in 1849.
'It can feel like the film The Truman Show,' he added of the exclave of Washington state.
'You can walk but there's also this limit to how far you can walk.'
The limit Mr O'Neill is referring to is the border between the US and Canada. The two nations have one of the world's longest frontiers but few parts are as odd as here in Point Roberts. A rural hinterland which directly abuts the vast suburbs of Vancouver, Canada's third largest city.
The US exclave is located on the base of a peninsula whose only land connection is to Canada. A tiny part of the US, barely 13 sqkm in size, seemingly forgotten by America and almost entirely dependent on a foreign nation.
'We're a no man's land, separated from the US, not part of Canada,' said Mr O'Neill, who has lived there since 1999.
For decades, the border was just a daily wrinkle for Point Roberts' residents: a cheery wave to border guards as Americans headed north for pizza and sushi – and school and work – as Canadians headed south for cheap petrol and to pick up packages from the US avoiding international postage.
Then Covid came and Canada sealed the border decimating business for two years. The border is back open but US President Donald Trump's continued mutterings of Canada becoming the '51st state' have delivered another economic blow with many Canadians now refusing to pop across to Point Roberts.
'Trump hit us hard'
From Sunday, Canada hosts the G7 summit of the world's wealthiest nations. Australia's Anthony Albanese will be a special guest at the chin wag which will discuss tariffs, wars and the environment.
But all eyes will be on Mr Trump. Any further annexation talk by the US president will be met with disdain by Canada's new Prime Minister Mark Carney and with despair in Point Roberts.
'The 'elbows up' Canadian boycott election stunt hit hard,' Point Roberts local Kathryn Trainor told news.com.au.
'Right now the exchange rate and our gasoline carbon taxes make it cheaper to buy fuel in Canada.
'It's pretty grim and some people super duper hate Trump being president again.'
Point Roberts is beautiful – but bonkers.
Forty minutes from Vancouver's CBD, the skyscrapers give way to neat Canadian suburbia that wouldn't look out of place in Australia. Semi-detached homes with double garages face well maintained parks with outdoor barbecues. Small strips of takeaways, laundrettes and convenience stores are close by.
Then it all comes to a sudden, shuddering halt. A row of yellow bollards and warning signs marks of both the end of suburbia – and Canada.
It would be easy to just walk over the unguarded barrier to the seeming wilderness of maple and cedar trees beyond. But to do so would be a felony of international proportions. Use the tiny borders crossing instead.
On the US side, in Point Roberts, live around 1300 people. On the Canadian side, in the suburb of Tsawwassen which covers a similar area, there are 24,000 people – almost 20 times as much.
From the air at night it can look a bit like North and South Korea. Busy Vancouver shines brightly. Then a straight line and just a few lights flicker in Point Roberts.
The 1849 pencil stroke the ricochets today
'We're minutes from downtown Vancouver but people would be hard pressed to find us on a map,' Mr O'Neill told news.com.au.
Blame the maps on the British.
In the 19th century, the UK and US were still battling it out as to who would control the North American continent.
In Washington and London pencil lines were furiously drawn on maps.
The result was the 1849 Treaty of Oregon which set the border in the west at the 49th parallel. The British were savvy enough to ensure the entirety of the strategically important Vancouver Island, south of the 49th parallel, was in its column.
But when the pencil lines were drawn the Point Roberts peninsula was so small that the British didn't realise they had handed over the tiniest southern tip of it to the US.
Realising their error, London belatedly asked the US to allow Point Roberts to be within British – now Canadian – control. Reportedly, they received no reply and the treaty stood.
Ms Trainor moved to Point Roberts from Texas to bring her children up in peace and quiet.
'The kids go to the beach and do nature walks every day. They have more of a holistic experience which is really good.'
Compact houses dot the tree lined lanes of Point Roberts. The area's one supermarket, a big box which seems out of place in the rural setting, flies the US and Canadian flags and accepts both currencies
But Point Roberts comes with challenges. Students that choose US over Canadian schools endure a daily coach trip that's 40 minutes each way and crosses an international frontier four times. Any fire that erupts in Point Roberts has to be extinguished by volunteer fire fighters from Canada.
Few Americans visit or settle in Point Roberts because the multiple border crossings make it hard to get too – so it generally relies on Canadians.
But US visa rules mean Canadians can only visit for 180 days a year so few of them are able to settle in Point Roberts even if they wanted too.
A stark sign of that is house prices in Point Roberts are around three times less than just a few metres away across the border.
When the border was closed during Covid things went downhill. For a time locals couldn't even drive through Canada to get to the US. While visits to Canadian doctors were no longer allowed. At great expense Washington state laid on a ferry to the US mainland so residents weren't entirely stranded.
Residents would trek up to the frontier, next to a stone obelisk marking the border, and mingle with their Canadian neighbours. But they had to remain on their side of the 49th parallel or risk the wrath of the border guards.
For two years, barely a Canadian visited the exclave.
But now the border is open, the ferry has stopped and the people of Point Roberts set about enticing Canadians back.
Tremendous beauty
Mr O'Neill's dream is to open the Blackfish resort, in an old fish cannery. It would be a boutique hotel, restaurant and spa that he hopes will entice Canadians year round to revel in Point Roberts' city adjacent wildlife and wilderness.
'It's got a tremendous natural beauty. I see eagles and blue herons every day; I've kayaker with Orcas hundreds of times.
'We get people coming down here for gas and parcels but what if they could get a cup of coffee, lunch, and a cocktail?
'It would make Point Roberts more accessible, and every business would be better off,' he said.
'We need that. I've got three children that left because there's no opportunities.'
'Our regulars are offended'
Neil and Krystal King, who own a souvenir shop in Point Roberts, had a quirky idea to give visitors a quirky reason to linger. The pair opened the world's only rubber duck museum.
'We already sold rubber ducks in our shop. We did research, and were like 'wait, the history of rubber ducks is really interesting and nobody is telling it',' said Mr King.
The modest museum has a rubber duck from 1911, an original moulding from the first mass-produced Disney Donald Duck toy from the 1930s and a modern Taylor Swift duck. Of course, there are copious ducks in all hues for sale.
Mr King said border guards would tell them that when they asked why people were coming to Point Roberts many said it was because of the ducks.
'The day we opened, we had a line going through the store'.
But since news.com.au spoke to the Kings, everything has changed.
'Our regulars are all saying the same thing,' Mrs King told the US' National Public Radio in May.
'They're offended by the rhetoric from the White House.
'They don't like their sovereignty being threatened. They feel the only tool they have is boycotting the US and keeping those tourist dollars out.'
It's tariffs too. Mostly made in China, the price of importing rubber ducks skyrocketed for the Kings.
They're now moving their museum to the Canadian side of the border.
'We love having our quaint little shop here.
'But it's not a choice between moving the ducks to Canada or keeping them here; it's a choice between moving to Canada or closing.'
No country has been Abel to spoil it
Despite the seeming remoteness and peace of Point Roberts, the world isn't far away.
Container ships to and from Vancouver's port and ferries connecting the islands of British Columbia glide silently by in the distance; the lights of the Canadian metropolis shimmer on the horizon.
Wouldn't it just have been easier if Point Roberts had been officially detached from the US all those years ago?
'If Point Roberts was part of the contiguous United States or Canada it would be strip malls like the rest of the place,' said Mr O'Neill.
'It's unique because it's the bastard stepchild.
'Neither country has been able to spoil it'.