Inspired perhaps by his memories of Sag Harbor in his home town of Southampton, NY, Dan Harris envisioned founding a sea port town on the Donation Land Claim (DLC) to which he acceded in 1854 (See "Meet Dan Harris" and the companion booklet, Dan Harris Stakes His Claim.) As recorded in Island County in 1853, this claim included Deadman's Point, giving access to the water on its north side, which was much deeper than on the eastern portion of the cove that became known as "Harris Bay" where silt deposited by the outflow of Padden Creek created a large area of shallow depth. Dan lived in a cabin at the mouth of the creek from 1854 until he built his hotel in 1853.

    In late June of 1861, when Alonzo M. Poe, who occupied the claim just south of Dan's, was issued a DLC Certificate that included the Deadman's Point area, Dan wasted little time in approaching Poe with an offer to purchase the 43 acres in question. The sale was closed on August 13th thus assuring Dan of access to deep water where he built a hotel and an adjacent dock twenty-two years later.

   Dan did not keep his intent to found a town to himself. On January 10, 1874 the following notice was published in the Bellingham Bay Mail:

A New Town on B.B.--Mr. Daniel Harris is canvassing the expediency of laying out a new town at what is known as Harris Bay, about a mile below the B. B. Coal Company's wharf. He says that if he can dispose of one hundred lots he will put up a sawmill valued at fifty thousand dollars. Hope he will succeed.¹

Four years later the Mail published a notice mentioning the fact that Dan had "once refused some thirty thousand dollars for his eligibly located real estate on Bellingham Bay"² indicating that he was holding resolutely to his dream.

    We may only guess at what motivated Dan Harris to create and file a plat map for the Town of Fairhaven after nearly thirty years of living a hermit's life on his DLC. Perhaps it was the arrival of the so called "Kansas Company" which in 1881 had announced its intent to establish a major lumbering operation on Bellingham Bay. We do know that Robert Knox, a leader in that group, was one of the individuals to whom Dan sold lots in mid-1883, as documented in the next section.