North America > Canada > British Columbia > Vancouver Island > Yuquot
Yuquot, also called Friendly Cove, is a small roadless settlement on Nootka Island with a history far larger than its present size. It is the ancestral home of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht people, a National Historic Site, and one of the key early-contact places on the Pacific coast.
This was a major Nuu-chah-nulth whaling and summer village long before European ships arrived. In the late 1700s, James Cook, Spanish officers, British traders, and George Vancouver all passed through Nootka Sound, and the diplomatic argument known as the Nootka Crisis helped decide imperial claims on the northwest coast.
Today Yuquot is quiet: a dock, a former church turned cultural centre, totems, gravel beaches, and the Nootka Lighthouse. Its strength is that the place has not been smoothed into an attraction. Getting here by boat or floatplane from Gold River is part of the point, and visitors should treat it first as Mowachaht/Muchalaht home ground, not as a scenic ruin.