Mount Constitution is a dramatic mountain crowning Orcas Island in the central Salish Sea. On the very tip of the mountain is a 60 foot Medieval stone tower. From its dramatic vantage point it looks south beyond Mount Rainer and the Olympic Peninsula, east to Mount Baker and the Cascades, west over Vancouver Island, and North beyond the city of Vancouver and the southern ranges of Canada. The tower was built in the Great Depression by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) when young men relocated to camps across the United States and built things. Many useful and many romantic ideals, often both. The CCC built a beautiful romantic tower in a stunning location on the top of a mountain on an Emerald Isle in the Salish Sea. That tower still stands proud today and hosts a million visitors a year. Some visit it regularly like a secular church. Rolf Eriksen has been intimately involved with Orcas Island, Mount Constitution and the CCC tower over many years since the 1950’s. He has rebuilt parts of it and surveys it with a loving eye every week. The tower and that mountain are a part of Rolf and he is a part of them. This book is Rolf ’s story of the tower and a scrapbook of collected images.

San Juan County History