Dave Nicanry, a historian and former director of the Washington State Historical Society, gave a public lecture at the Lacey Museum on the evolution of the Northwest Passage as a cartographic concept from about 1753 to 1853. Nicanry opened by tracing the idea back to post‑Columbian European ambitions for a shortcut to Asia, noting that early explorers including Baffin, Frobisher and Hudson repeatedly failed to find a navigable ocean‑to‑ocean route because of ice and uncharted land.

Nicanry highlighted an illustrated 1753 chart that depicted a large western inlet—what mapmakers called the “Bay of the West”—and explained how Enlightenment‑era cartographers used the notion of equipoise or counterpoise (mirroring large bays on opposite sides of a continent) to project such features. He said Russian reports from Bering and Chirikov in the mid‑18th century revived speculation and fed new maps in London and Paris.

Turning to Captain James Cook’s voyages, Nicanry said Cook’s Pacific charts advanced geographic knowledge but still encountered Arctic ice that frustrated the search for a saltwater passage. Cook’s third voyage and its published atlas, Nicanry said, influenced maritime interest in the Northwest Coast and helped spur what he described as the Northwest maritime fur trade.

Nicanry described how commercial incentives—especially the lucrative sea‑otter trade in China—drew traders such as Robert Gray and John Meares into detailed coastal exploration, producing maps that suggested a more intricate coast than Cook had shown. Those fur‑trade charts, and later inland surveying by figures such as Peter Pond and Alexander Mackenzie, shifted the Northwest Passage concept from a direct ocean‑to‑ocean route to a continental shortcut across rivers and lakes linking Atlantic and Pacific basins.

He discussed George Vancouver’s late‑18th‑century coastal surveys (1791–93) as a corrective to earlier straight‑line depictions, noting Vancouver’s detailed mapping of Vancouver Island and Puget Sound. Nicanry contrasted optimistic “geographies of hope,” such as early U.S. War Department maps prepared for Meriwether Lewis, with William Clark’s post‑expedition projections that revealed mountain ranges and terrain that made a practical transcontinental water route impractical.

Nicanry said the search for a continental link persisted into the 1850s, when railroad surveyors such as Isaac Stevens began mapping transcontinental rail corridors, effectively turning the quest for a Northwest Passage into a railroad project. He also discussed McClure’s 1853 observations about McClure Strait and noted that Roald Amundsen’s 1912–25 transit is commonly regarded as the first full Northwest Passage crossing, while earlier attempts such as Sir John Franklin’s ended in tragedy.

In question‑and‑answer remarks, Nicanry explained map provenance for a rare 18th‑century chart he examined and said the map has since been digitized; he also affirmed that indigenous peoples traversed and shared geographic knowledge across the continent long before European explorers. The program began with a land acknowledgment for the Treaty of Medicine Creek tribes and concluded with an announcement that the Lacey Museum will open to the public on Jan. 15, 2026.