Pitt Island (Washington)

McNeil Island is an island in the northwest United States in south Puget Sound, located southwest of Tacoma, Washington. With a land area of 6.63 square miles (17.2 km2), it lies just north of Anderson Island; Fox Island is to the north, across Carr Inlet, and to the west, separated from Key Peninsula by Pitt Passage. The Washington mainland lies to the east, across the south basin of Puget Sound. The island has been owned by the government for many years; it was the location of a federal penitentiary for over a century, from 1875 to 1981. It was turned over to the Washington State Department of Corrections and became the McNeil Island Corrections Center, until it closed in 2011. It was the last remaining island prison in the country to be accessible only by air and sea.In November 2010, the state announced closure plans for 2011, saving $14 million. A detention center for violent sexual offenders remains on the island. The McNeil Island Historical Society was chartered in 2010 shortly after the closing of the prison for the purpose of educating the public about, and preserving, the rich history of McNeil Island.

The Special Commitment Center (SCC) in the US state of Washington is a post-prison-sentence treatment institution for people designated as sexually violent predators, located on McNeil Island. Civil commitment is the subject of controversy because it allows the involuntary civil confinement of a sex offender after the court's sentence has been fulfilled.

Eagle Island State Park is a public recreation area in south Puget Sound occupying the entirety of Eagle Island in Pierce County, Washington. The five-acre (2.0 ha) island sits in Balch Passage between McNeil and Anderson islands about 750 feet (230 m) off Anderson Island's north shore. The island was named for Harry Eagle, one of the party members of the Wilkes Expedition of 1841.Park activities include picnicking, beachcombing, birdwatching, and wildlife viewing. A primitive trail runs through thick brush with short spurs that lead to the beach. The narrow beach is mostly gravel with the exception of a point of sand on the south end of the island. Three moorage buoys are available for boaters. The park is administered as a satellite of Jarrell Cove State Park.

Penrose Point State Park is a 165-acre (67 ha) Washington state park located on Mayo Cove and Carr Inlet at the southern end of Puget Sound in Pierce County. The park has over 2 miles (3.2 km) of saltwater shoreline as well as 2.5 miles (4.0 km) of hiking and biking trails and an interpretive nature trail. Park activities include picnicking, boating, scuba diving, fishing, swimming, waterskiing, clam digging, crabbing, beachcombing, birdwatching, wildlife viewing, and horseshoes. The park was named after Stephen Penrose, the president of Whitman College in Walla Walla from 1884 to 1934.

Carr Inlet, in southern Puget Sound in the U.S. state of Washington, is an arm of water between Key Peninsula and Gig Harbor Peninsula. Its southern end is connected to the southern basin of Puget Sound. Northward, it separates McNeil Island and Fox Island. The northern end of Carr Inlet is named Henderson Bay, which feeds into Burley Lagoon. Carr Inlet was named by Charles Wilkes during the Wilkes Expedition of 1838–1842, to honor Overton Carr, one of the expedition's officers.

Lakebay is an unincorporated community in Pierce County, Washington, United States. Lakebay is located at the head of Mayo Cove on the east side of the Key Peninsula, 1 mile (1.6 km) south of Home. Lakebay has a post office with ZIP code 98349.The community derives its name from nearby Bay Lake.

KGHP (89.9 FM) is a student-run high school radio station operating on a non-commercial license in Gig Harbor, Washington. Owned by the Peninsula School District #401, the station's studio is located on the campus of Peninsula High School. With its two translators, K207AZ 89.3 and K289BZ 105.7, the station's signal covers most of the Gig Harbor Peninsula, Key Peninsula and portions of Tacoma, Fox Island, Washington and Olympia, Washington. The station came on the air in 1988 and was one of three high school radio station in the state of Washington. The first manager and teacher was Don Hofmann, a former KNBQ-FM general manager. KSTW-TV technician Max Bice was the engineer. The current station manager is Spencer "Walrus" Abersolds. The multi-format station is run by students at Peninsula High School and Gig Harbor High School during the day, and in the evening to night hours it is run by community volunteers. The station gives a variety of shows from the students which range from sports broadcasts to classic rock. A variety of genres is played, including Jazz, Blues, Reggae, Roots & Americana, Classic rock and vintage music. As the station is also an educational tool for the students, KGHP also runs news briefs and fact segments, at various times throughout the day, along with taking requests via the phone. The station broadcasts Peninsula High School and Gig Harbor High School home varsity football games with the broadcasting crew called The Sports Guys. The station also provides emergency information during power outages, severe storms and natural disasters.

Anderson Island is the southernmost island in Puget Sound and a census-designated place of Pierce County, Washington, United States. It is accessible by boat or a 20-minute ferry ride from Steilacoom. Anderson Island is just south of McNeil Island. To the northwest, Key Peninsula is across Drayton Passage. The south basin of Puget Sound separates the island from the mainland to the southeast, while to the southwest the Nisqually Reach of Puget Sound separates the island from the mainland.

The McNeil Island Corrections Center (MICC) was a prison in the northwest United States, operated by the Washington State Department of Corrections. It was on McNeil Island in Puget Sound in unincorporated Pierce County, near Steilacoom, Washington.Opened 148 years ago in 1875, it had previously served as a territorial correctional facility and then a federal penitentiary. Americans sentenced to terms of imprisonment by the United States courts that operated in China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries served their terms at McNeil Island. In the 1910s, inmates included Robert Stroud, the "Birdman of Alcatraz", who fatally stabbed a prison guard in March 1916. During World War II, eighty-five Japanese Americans who had resisted the draft to protest their wartime confinement, including civil rights activist Gordon Hirabayashi, were sentenced to prison terms at McNeil; all were pardoned by President Harry S. Truman in 1947. Career criminal and novelist James Fogle was sent to McNeil at the age of 17 in the 1950s. The state of Washington began to lease the facility from the federal government in 1981, and later that year the state department of corrections began moving prisoners into the facility, renamed "McNeil Island Corrections Center." The island was deeded to the state government in 1984.In November 2010, the department announced its plans to close the penitentiary by 2011, saving $14 million in the process.

The 2001 Nisqually earthquake occurred at 10:54:32 local time on February 28, 2001, and lasted nearly a minute. The intraslab earthquake had a moment magnitude of 6.8 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe). The epicenter was in the southern Puget Sound, northeast of Olympia, but the shock was felt in Oregon, British Columbia, eastern Washington, and Idaho. This was the most recent of several large earthquakes that occurred in the Puget Sound region over a 52-year period and caused property damage valued at $1–4 billion. One person died of a heart attack and several hundred were injured.

Home Colony was an anarchist colony on Puget Sound in Washington State from 1898 to 1909. Its founders were members of a former Bellamyite colony who bought 26 acres and formally organized as the Mutual Home Association in January 1898. Colonists purchased one or two acres and the proceeds purchased new land for the colony. Its colonists lived as individuals rather than cooperatively and tolerated a wide degree of social practices, including free love, free speech. They organized few cooperative institutions aside from a cooperative store (1902), some mutual construction projects, and a weekly anarchist paper, Discontent: Mother of Progress. When the newspaper was fined for obscenity, they replaced it with The Demonstrator. The original 40 colonists grew to 91 by 1900 and 155 by 1906. The colony's numerous visiting speakers included Emma Goldman. Following 1909 changes to the association's articles of incorporation allowed land to transfer from their mutual trust to private ownership, Home declined as a cooperative community but remained a home for anarchists.

Home is a census-designated place in Pierce County, Washington, United States. The 2010 Census placed the population at 1,377. The community lies on the Key Peninsula and borders the waters of Carr Inlet, an extension of Puget Sound. Home is now primarily a town of beach homes, although around the turn of the twentieth century, it was considered a model, utopian community of anarchists.