Maury Island (1947)

One of the first modern-era cases, tainted by hoax suspicions; linked to the 'Men in Black'.

Maury Island is a tied island in Puget Sound in the U.S. state of Washington. It is connected to Vashon Island by an isthmus built by local homeowners in 1913. Before construction of the isthmus, the island was connected to Vashon only during low tide. The island is rural with large areas of farmland, forest, and relatively undeveloped shoreline. Currently, environmental issues on the island are under considerable scrutiny. Maury Island was named in 1841 during the Wilkes Expedition in honor of William Lewis Maury. It was the site of the Maury Island incident, a case of an alleged encounter with a UFO. Point Robinson Light is located on Point Robinson, the easternmost point on Maury Island. Dockton was once the site of a dry dock as well as a salmon cannery. Maury and Vashon Islands are home to the Vashon-Maury Island Community Council. In the 1940s, Vashon had a chamber of commerce that acted more like a community council than a traditional chamber. By the 1950s, the precursor to today's community council was organized and called itself the "Civic Assembly." Today, the Community Council is charged with working to preserve the rural nature of Vashon and Maury Islands. Maury Island was also the center of controversy between the locals and Glacier Northwest, a company that supplies ready-mixed concrete owned by the Taiheiyo Cement Company of Japan. The company intended a 300-fold expansion of their existing gravel mine on the island, which was previously permitted to extract up to 20,000 tons per year.