This street, created in 1931, was almost certainly named for Camano Island (known as ʔəw̓alus in Lushootseed), which is located, as Wikipedia tells us, in Puget Sound “between Whidbey Island and the mainland… by the Saratoga Passage to the west and Port Susan and Davis Slough to the east.” The timeline of its naming:
- The strait connecting Puget Sound to the Strait of Juan de Fuca was named Ensenada de Caamaño by the Quimper Expedition in 1790. Jacinto Caamaño Moraleja was a fellow Spanish explorer of the Pacific Northwest.
- This strait was renamed Admiralty Inlet by the Vancouver Expedition in 1792.
- ʔəw̓alus was named Macdonough Island by the Wilkes Expedition in 1841.
- In 1847, Vice Admiral Sir Henry Kellett of the Royal Navy resurrected the Camano name (after having altered its spelling) and applied it to Macdonough Island.
S Camano Place begins at Renton Avenue S between S Thistle Street and S Cloverdale Street and goes 425 east to a cul-de-sac.
Born and raised in Seattle, Benjamin Donguk Lukoff had his interest in local history kindled at the age of six, when his father bought him settler granddaughter Sophie Frye Bass’s Pig-Tail Days in Old Seattle at the gift shop of the Museum of History and Industry. He studied English, Russian, and linguistics at the University of Washington, and went on to earn his master’s in English linguistics from University College London. His book of rephotography, Seattle Then and Now, was published in 2010. An updated version came out in 2015.
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