By M.L. LYKE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Real estate agents describe Shaw as a "closed" island. Turnover is minimal. Prices are high. And locals are quick to snatch up anything listed. "When properties on Shaw come on the market, they sell pretty quickly -- and typically to people from Shaw," says Merri Ann Simonson, sales associate at Coldwell Banker offices on San Juan Island.

Current listings include a small cabin on almost 8 acres for $229,000 and a 28-acre waterfront parcel for $1.2 million. Islanders talk about multimillion-dollar sales to new high-tech executives, including a prized 300-acre waterfront parcel along the channel separating Shaw and Orcas. They also talk about what such sales mean for escalating property taxes.

"I don't know how my three children will be able to keep our property because of the taxes," says third-generation islander Henry Hoffman, leaning back in a turn-of-the-century school desk inside the historical museum. "That property's been in the family 100 years."

Hoffman, an easy-going storyteller with a gentle smile, remembers an island where young families lived off the land and sea, plowing fields with horses and fishing salmon from a fleet of reef netters. Eggs and fryers were a thriving business. "When there was a dance or get-together, the women would be on one side of the room talking women stuff and the guys would be on the other side talking chickens."

Those were the days before "No Trespassing" and "No Camping" signs went up on miles of shoreline. "As a kid you could play on almost any beach," Hoffman says. "People lived inland. Now everyone lives on the shore."