page_title: New Eddystone Rock
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: New Eddystone Rock / History
context_page_description: The Alaskan island called New Eddystone Rock is a pillar of basalt. It is located in Behm Canal, about 40 miles east of Ketchikan.
context_section_description: How the native Tlingit people discovered the island, their name for it, and what role it played in their lives prior to European contact is lost to history.  
  The first European to observe New Eddystone Rock was Captain George Vancouver.  He was dispatched by the British Admiralty in 1791 to survey the northwest coast of North America.  By July 1793 Vancouver's multi-year voyage brought him to what is now Observatory Inlet, British Columbia.  He anchored his ships there and then led a two-boat surveying team north along the shore.  He commanded HMS Discovery's yawl, and Lieutenant Peter Puget commanded Discovery's launch.
  Exploring north through Behm Canal, Vancouver reached New Eddystone Rock on Friday, August 9, 1793.  He beached his boats there.  In his report to King George III, he wrote,
  We stopped to breakfast and whilst we were thus engaged, three small canoes, with about a dozen of the natives, landed and approached us unarmed, and with the utmost good humor accepted such presents as were offered to them, making signs in return, that they had brought nothing to dispose of, but inviting us in the most pressing manner to their habitations
  Vancouver chose not to accept the invitation, but instead continued exploring north.  He named the island for the Eddystone lighthouse off Plymouth, England, a pillar that also erupted from a narrow base at sea level.
  Much of Southeast Alaska, including New Eddystone Rock, was incorporated into Tongass National Forest through a series of proclamations by President Theodore Roosevelt.  On December 1, 1978 President Jimmy Carter proclaimed a portion of the Tongass National Forest to be Misty Fjords National Monument, which included New Eddystone Rock.  In 1980 Congress enacted the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which provided wilderness protection to most of the national monument.  The island is currently managed by the U.S. Forest Service.
caption: The Eddystone lighthouse as it appeared in Vancouver's time
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