A 200-acre biological preserve on False Bay offers a fine opportunity to observe intertidal life at low tide. The San Juan Historical Museum , at 405 Price Street, is a homestead from the 1890s, containing displays of local pioneer artifacts. Exhibits include data on the orca pods that feed in the waters off the San Juans. Art galleries, bookstores, cafes and grocery stores are found on Spring Street and connecting streets. The National Parks Service operates a visitor center on Spring Street, where you can obtain a map for the historic walking tour of the town.
Many visitors leave their cars on the mainland and use bicycles to tour the island.
Fifteen minutes' drive from Friday Harbor, the resort at Roche Harbor is one of the region's most unusual and fascinating vacation haunts. In its first incarnation, it was a Hudson's Bay trading post, servicing the nearby British encampment, until limestone was discovered in the surrounding hills and thirteen quarries were developed. Then a lime and cement shipping operation was started in the mid-1800s. The property and business changed hands several times until the early 1880s, when Roche Harbor was purchased by magnate John S. McMillin, who turned the operation into a multi-million dollar mining and shipping industry. His limeworks were the largest lime operation west of the Mississippi, and ships carried the lime to ports down the Pacific Coast, until the operation closed in 1956.