‘Hey George,’ Ocean Shores still beckons

Undiscover Day celebrated on Saturday

By Scott D. Johnston

“If the weather was like this, no wonder George didn’t come ashore!”

The quip by local event planner Dianne Hansen summed up a dreary downpour that left the rebirth of “Undiscovery Day” stuck inside at the Shilo Inn Saturday evening.

Undiscovery Day was started in 1969 as a way to publicize Ocean Shores, the new community on Washington’s North Coast. April 27, 1792, was the date that British explorer George Vancouver is said to have sailed past what is now Ocean Shores on his ship, the HMS Discovery.

In 1986, the Ocean Shores City Council passed a resolution declaring the last Saturday in April each year should be celebrated as “Undiscovery Day.”

The proclamation noted that “despite his consummate skills as an explorer, Captain Vancouver made one of the world’s major oversights in the annals of exploration by utterly failing to discover Ocean Shores….”

The event ran for more than a quarter-century, but eventually faded away.

It was resurrected this year. North Beach Speech Masters president Mike Preston recounted Vancouver’s egregious oversight for about 20 celebrants who shouted “Hey George!”