After retiring from a career in insurance and banking, I moved to Bellingham’s Fairhaven Neighborhood to be near the boats and the water. I soon became interested in the history of the section of the waterfront that my apartment overlooks. I quickly learned that during the period from 1900 to 1980 the Fairhaven shoreline east and north of Padden Creek had been home to a series of lumber milling, logging and boatbuilding operations, several of them being world-class enterprises. All were located on land originally owned by Dan Harris, the founder of Fairhaven.

       Consequently, I realized that my research must begin with Dan Harris’s real estate acquisitions and sales as found in land and court records. This led to an exhaustive search of newspaper references to Dan Harris during his lifetime and following his death. Finally, I turned to the ships' logs from the whaling voyages in which Dan Harris participated. Research of Washington sources is virtually completed and investigation of sources on Long Island, NY, where Dan was Born, and in Southern California, where he died, is well underway. Because of the time-consuming nature of this research effort, I decided to post the results serially online at dan-harris.info and to publish them in booklet form as funds permit.

Here is the first booklet in the series: DAN HARRIS MEETS THE PRESS. It presents an exhaustive anthology of contemporary newspaper reports on the life and passing of Daniel J. Harris, offering sporadic glimpses into his activities and his character. These reports are reproduced here in their approximate, original formats and their exact, original texts without any corrections to spelling and grammer. They appear in the order of the events they recount. This booklet also contains the only known photographs of Dan Harris and his hotel and reproductions of the original plat of the town of Fairhaven and the floor plan of Dan's hotel. I hope that you will enjoy every page.