Scribing from current digs (this story is less than hours old).

(1/2)

Here we go down the rabbit hole. Or we would if the soil weren't apparently unsuitable for it: Per (1), the ferry apparently visits four times daily. That's a lot for a place with a population of <20. From the same article:

The island has no gas station, store, mail delivery or garbage pickup, and the Pierce County ferry only comes four times a day. Many of the residents use their own boats to reach the mainland in Steilacoom. So there are fewer than 20 residents, most of whom use their own boats, but the ferry visits one/four times a day?

Anchorage-based entrepreneur J.C. Morris bought the entire island in 1946 and planned to build 200 homes on the island with a retail center, churches and a school. His plan was thwarted by the prohibitive cost of installing sewer lines. Can't find anything about J.C. Morris, but Goog'ing "J C Morris Anchorage" gives: J C Morris Insurance Services, 4011 Arctic Blvd #105, Anchorage, AK 99503, USA. Nothing of note to be found.

Morris’ mansion was sold in 2015, a 5,300-square-foot mansion platted on 5 acres of land. The Thurston County residents who bought the home paid $1.1 million for it. This led me to (2):

The new owners are Thurston County restaurateurs Nicole Pham and her husband Jim Porter, according to Karen Vincent who handled the sale for Morrison House Sotheby’s International Realty. The estate originally was listed for $1.77 million. Then it was reduced to $1.299 million. It sold for $1.1 million. The couple own a small chain of Lemon Grass Vietnamese restaurants in Thurston County. This all seems legit, the restaurant exists, and I can't find anything that looks suspicious to me. Note that Sotheby's International Realty is not directly connected to Sotheby's (3rd party company that S's bought out), but their employees are all part of the same social stratum.

The home features an 800-square-foot living room with panoramic water views, a wine cellar, three bedrooms in the main house and a storage room on the ground level to store supplies brought from the mainland.

<Storage room

<Supplies

More on this from (3). Note that this article gives the date of purchase by Morris as the early sixties, not mid forties.

On the home’s lower level, a former walk-in vault serves as a wine cellar and an adjacent room is reserved for playing pool. A spacious lower-level closet is equipped with rods and shelves for storing out-of-season clothes. A storage room as large as many contemporary living rooms is lined with shelves for supplies brought from the mainland. Note that this article gives the location of the storage room as seemingly belowground, while (2) implies that it is on the ground floor (first floor for Burgers). I wonder if the pool room has a ping pong table?

Because of the limited evening ferry schedule, said Chenaur, guests often spent the night in the guest quarters, the cabin or in the two unoccupied bedrooms. When many children were staying over, the couple lined the den with beds. ALMONDS ACTIVATED!

During the Chenaur’s tenure on the island, it was not uncommon for 25 or 30 people to stay overnight. During one wedding, the home and its outbuildings accommodated 49 people, she said. So the fully-occupied house nearly tripled the island's population? I know I'm a fucking bumpkin, but that sounds like a popular party. More information about Morris:

Some of those same issues kept Morris from realizing his vision of a fully developed island. He platted more than 250 lots, but sold only a few. And while some lots like his own could handle waste water in a septic system, other lots don’t have the right soil for such a system, necessitating the need for a sewer system that never was completed. So either he was a shit entrepreneur (didn't check the place out/couldn't be arsed to follow through), or there was some other plan. Note that the 'bad soil for digging' would be an excellent cover for underground tunnels. "Sorry, buddy, you can't dig here, the soil's bad. It's nothing to do with the concrete tunnels which definitely aren't down there."