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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.

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.

Pitt Island is a small island astride Pitt Passage in Puget Sound, located in Pierce County, Washington.

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.

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.

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.

Tanglewood Island is a small island in Hale Passage off the northern shore of Fox Island in Pierce County, Washington. It was originally called Grave Island and was sacred to the Nisqually Indians, who for decades practiced tree burials by placing their honored dead in dugout canoes high in the fir trees.Later on, the island was purchased and used as a summer home by Conrad L. Hoska (1856–1910), a Tacoma pioneer. In 1933, Dr. Alfred Schultz, a Tacoma physician, purchased the island for $8,000, and according to him, the Smithsonian Institution had removed all traceable relics from Grave Island prior to 1891. Dr. Schultz built and ran a boy's camp, Camp Ta-Ha-Do-Wa, on the island from 1945. In 1946 the lighthouse and lodge (pictured) on the northern tip of the island were completed, with the lighthouse being used during the summer as Dr. Schultz's office and as an infirmary. According to the Seattle Times (April 17, 1947), the Tanglewood Lighthouse was the first round lighthouse to be built in the US in 85 years. The government approved its design, authorized the installation of a beacon light, turned on in June, 1947, and consented to changing the island's name from Grave to Tanglewood. The lighthouse is no longer functional but stood for many years as a historical monument to the island, the camp, and Dr. Schultz. (Harbor History Museum Blog, November 28, 2013.) Following Dr. Schultz's death, his estate sold Tanglewood Island to a group of several individuals, who subdivided the island into plots, one for each member of the group. In 2014, when the lighthouse and main lodge had long since become rotten and nonfunctional, they began to tear them down but were stopped by Pierce County officials for failing to have the proper demolition permits. (KOMO News, January 30, 2014.) The Geographic Names Information System lists several alternative names: Ellens Isle, Grant Island, Grave Island, and Hoska Island. The name Tanglewood was inspired by the heavy undergrowth and Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales. It was chosen as the official name of the island by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names in 1947.In the 2010 United States Census, the island was included as part of the Fox Island census-designated place. The census block encompassing just Tanglewood Island showed a population of 8 with 5 housing units.

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.

Fox Island is an island and census-designated place (CDP) in Pierce County, Washington, United States, in Puget Sound. It is located approximately 5 miles (8 km) from Gig Harbor. The island was named Fox by Charles Wilkes during the United States Exploring Expedition, to honor J.L. Fox, an assistant surgeon on the expedition. The population was 3,633 at the 2010 census.

The Fox Island School is a former public school in Fox Island, Washington. On 15. July 1987 the National Register of Historic Places listed the building under the reference number 87001167 as a historic building.

Ketron Island is an island and a census-designated place (CDP) in Pierce County, Washington, United States. The island had a population of 24 persons according to the 2000 census, and 17 persons at the 2010 census. Ketron Island is located in southern Puget Sound just off the shoreline from Steilacoom. It lies between the mainland near the city of Steilacoom and Anderson Island near the extreme south end of Puget Sound. The island has a land area of 221 acres (89 hectares).