Celebrating History Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
A supplement to the Anacortes American
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Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Celebrating community Take a look back with us at the American’s 125 years and our island’s history Putting together this special section has been inspiring and illuminating for the Anacortes American staff. We hope you enjoy the stories, pictures and features that fill the following pages. We could have written more, so much more, but as the American celebrates its 125 years of publication, we’re focusing on celebrating community along with history. We hope you can join us for an open house Saturday, May 9 at the Depot Arts & Community Center. Doors will be open from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. (the same hours as the Anacortes Farmers Market). Inside the Depot you’ll find historic photos, a special quilt made by the Fidalgo Island Quilters and artwork from Anacortes School District students. It’s a community celebration we’re proud to host along with the Anacortes Museum. The big event is at noon, when the museum launches its new book, “Pictures of the Past: Celebrating 125 Years of Anacortes History.” It’s a great (not dry)
On the cover
ANACORTES MUSEUM
Paperboys (left to right) John Nesbitt, Dick Iversen and Jimmy Williamson were photographed in front of the Anacortes American in the fall of 1955 by Wallie Funk.
collection of historical columns written by former Anacortes American publisher Wallie Funk, accompanied by amazing pictures from the museum’s collection. Wallie plans to be there The books will be available for $25 each. They will also be available after the open house at the museum and at local bookstores. The columns and pictures tell the Anacortes story so much better and in so much more depth that we could in a small publication like this. It’s fitting that Wallie will be in the spotlight on the American’s big day. He is linked so tightly to the paper and the community — and is an inspiration to both. I’ve spent a lot of time looking through the American archives in recent weeks as we’ve been putting this publication together. What’s striking, decade by decade, are the widespread efforts to improve Anacortes and help it prosper. That and the entrepreneurs who often came with nothing and sought their for-
tunes. Who knew people planted lobster here and harvested goldenseal and ginseng? What an undertaking it must have been to sail north and fish for cod. Every year, despite wars, depressions and hardship, the pages of the American have been filled with people reaching out to others. That community spirit is what the newspaper has fostered and celebrated, and we’re proud to be part of that tradition. So many staffs have come before our current one — so many deadlines and events joyous and tragic. The American has covered it all for 125 years — and will for decades to come. — Publisher Jack Darnton
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Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
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Celebrating History
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Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Anacortes American has a proud past Paper has prodded and promoted the city since 1890, riding booms and surviving busts one week at a time Anacortes American news editor Elaine Walker, now on staff at the Anacortes Museum, wrote this story to mark the Anacortes American’s 120th anniversary in 2010. It remains the most complete account of the American’s past and is published in a shorter version below. A good account of the American’s earliest days is in one of Wallie Funk’s columns in the new book “Pictures of the Past: Celebrating 125 Year of Anacortes History.” The column, “All the news: Anacortes home to many publications,” recounts in the early days that the papers took on an additional role — “They were chiefly vehicles to proclaim Anacortes to the outside world, through sometimes fictional expressions of optimism.”
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ince the first edition of the Anacortes American was published on May 15, 1890, the weekly newspaper has, for 120 years without a pause, trumpeted the city’s triumphs and lamented its tragedies. Through economic booms and busts, fair weather and foul, the staff of the American has taken to heart the mission announced by founders Fred H. Boynton and Douglass Allmond in the inaugural edition: “To publish an honest, independent, aggressive newspaper that shall tell the story of our marvelous city and its surroundings.” The relationship between Anacortes and its long-serving newspaper is close and mutually beneficial. “I enjoyed the intimacy between the newspaper and the community it serves, and I always felt that the American was an important part of the fabric of Anacortes. I think that’s been the case from its beginning 120 years ago, and it continues today,” said Duncan Frazier, publisher of the Anacortes American from 1994 to 2001. “A community without a newspaper is a community that has trouble establishing an identity.” Like many who followed, Allmond had a keen appreciation of what Anacortes was — and what it could become. After he and Boynton made a reconnaissance visit in early 1890, they returned with two train cars of power presses, paper cutter, folding machine, type and other printing gear. Propelled by the speculative boom, Allmond and Boynton spent about $4,000 to build a commodious two-story structure at the southeast corner of 10th Street
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John Webber (left) and Wallie Funk, who purchased the American in 1950, look at an issue at the American’s current office at 901 Sixth Street, its home since 1913. The presses are long gone. The paper is printed today at Skagit Publishing in Mount Vernon. and M Avenue. The 60 by 80 foot structure had pressrooms, newspaper office space and “three very handsome stores” on the main floor and 22 rooms upstairs. The site was close to the new Seattle & Northern Passenger Depot at 10th Street and N Avenue, now library grounds. The Anacortes American bowed to the world in May. “It was an eight-page, six-column weekly, devoted to local affairs in general but more especially to telling the world what a great city Anacortes was destined to be; and its columns were full of thrilling tales of the richness of our surrounding and undeveloped resources,” Allmond said in one of several articles he wrote years later. The era was a boom time for print journalism. “Almost from the beginning, papers were being started all over the place,” said historian and former American editor Wallie Funk. Early Anacortes newspapers included the Northwest Enterprise, the Daily Prog-
ress, the Anacortes Citizen, the Weekly Anacortesan and the Anacortes Mercury. It may seem surprising the city supported so many papers, but they were the CNN, Fox News and MSNBC of an era when there was no radio, television — or even paved roads. “News did not travel fast up the Sound, and sometimes it would take days,” Funk said. The economic bubble burst within a year of the American’s debut. The shiny printing gear was sold. After the panic, Allmond joked, the American degenerated into a “tri-weekly” — the publisher would get out a paper one week and “try” to get out another the next week. By 1913 the American was doing business at 901 Sixth St., where it remains today. New equipment helped land large print jobs such as the Whatcom phone book, and for years the American was the official county newspaper of record. Illness forced J. M. Post to sell the paper in 1930: “Throughout his steward-
ship of 23 golden years, Mr. Post steadfastly exemplified in the American the principle of service to all the people and the weal and welfare of Anacortes and Skagit county in every issue of his paper,” an American article said at the time. Ve r n o n M c Ke n z i e a n d C a r l A . Sandquist bought the paper as partners, with Sandquist assuming management and editorial duties. “The American will continue as an independent and fearless advocate of everything that is in the best interest of the city of Anacortes and of Skagit County,” Sandquist wrote in his first editorial July 3, 1930. “No attempt will be made to publish news of national and international events. This paper is devoted to local interests and local news. The trend of journalism today is toward the metropolitan daily; and toward the bright, newsy, personalized weekly, which records all news and advertising events within its trading area,” he wrote, articulating a formula that still holds true today. From time to time the American stretched to cover state and national news, but it always returned to what it does best: Keeping the community up to date on what’s happening at home. As today’s publication boasts, “We Speak Fidalgo.” Cornelius Root bought the American in 1939. In 1949 he was a professor at the University of Washington Journalism School and an absentee owner, when he put the paper on the market. The two newspapers in town, the American and the Daily Mercury, had fought to an economic standstill and Root wanted out. In 1950 Wallie Funk and John Webber, fresh out of journalism school, found Root ready to make a deal, which they sealed with a $10 cash deposit. No bank would loan $3,700 to the duo, so they raised money from friends and family. Their investors included the doctor who delivered all three Funk boys, a canneryman who waived the interest, a kindly lumber executive and Funk’s brother Jim, an ex-Marine. Funk and Webber divided tasks by interest and ability. “John basically sold advertising. He was the business manager and I was the editor,” Funk said. Funk and Webber had excellent timing: The deal was struck in May, and the Mercury succumbed in September 1950.
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Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
Within two weeks they picked up the Mercury’s advertising, and the Bulletin lasted as long as Funk and Webber did. Funk still sees the Anacortes American as a platform to advocate civic improvement. In his years at the helm, he celebrated the community’s best and spoke for ways it could improve. His paper supported Texaco and Shell’s efforts to establish refineries, as well as efforts to pave roads, build a new hospital and upgrade schools and infrastructure. His editorial column exhorted citizens to save their photographic history and establish a museum and community theater. The city had 52 miles of unpaved streets, and the struggle to approve a Ninth Street LID for paving was brutal. “By the end of that I was ready to quit. The battle was horrendous,” Funk said. The issue was one reason Funk and Webber decided to sell. First they tried a merger in January 1962, then later sold their remaining interest. “When we merged with the Skagit Valley Herald, John and I were each 10 percent owners,” Funk said. “I learned a great ANACORTES MUSEUM fact of life: If you don’t own the majority of stock, you might as well not show up for Anacortes High School students were frequent visitors to the American in the 1950s when owners John Webber and Wallie Funk had them down for field the meetings.” Scripps League Newspapers bought trips.
both the Skagit Valley Herald and the Anacortes American in 1964, according to Skagit Valley Herald archives. Today both papers are published by Skagit Publishing and associated with Pioneer Newspapers. The American has continued its mission uninterrupted, although with a few editorial shakeups over the years. Many former staff members remember their time here with pride. “While the Anacortes American is the smallest newspaper I have managed, it also represents the best portion of my 25-year newspaper career,” Frazier said. “I’m proud to have been a small part of the Anacortes American’s lengthy history, and I wish the newspaper continuing success far into the 21st century,” he said. Funk said the American is an important defender of the community’s interests. “I still think it’s vital to the community that it comes out once a week,” he said. While there is an interconnected business relationship between the American and its parent company, the newsroom still retains an independent Fidalgo focus. The formula detailed by Sandquist 80 years ago still works well today — get the detailed hometown news in a bright weekly, and look to the bigger daily for news of the rest of the world.
Congratulations Anacortes American from the Anacortes Museum for recording 125 years of our community’s history! “Pictures of the Past: Celebrating 125 Years of Anacortes History” by retired Anacortes American publisher Wallie Funk (and produced by the Anacortes Museum), will be available May 9 at the museum, 1305 Eighth St., and other locations. (Closed Mondays).
The W.T. Preston is a national historic landmark vessel. Admission is $1-$3. Next to the Maritime Heritage Center or R Avenue, it is open the same hours. Stepping into this well-preserved stern-wheel steamboat is like travelling back in time. Photos of the local fishing fleet, taken in the 1950s by Wallie Funk, are on exhibit at the Anacortes Maritime Heritage Center, 703 R Ave. Admission is free. Open Sat.- Sun. in April, May, Sept. and Oct., and daily (except Mon.) in summer.
More than 20,000 photos are posted on the Anacortes Museum’s website. Old Anacortes American volumes may be viewed at the museum. For an appointment, please call (360) 293-1915.
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Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Museum’s new book compiles newspaper columns about people and events that shaped city’s history Former publisher Wallie Funk’s ‘witty, relevant’ stories packaged with historic pictures from museum’s collections BY BRIANA ALZOLA American staff writer
est to the stories told to him by his grandparents — two of the pioneers of the Anacortes area. Longtime newspaperman and history Between 1994 and 2001, Funk wrote buff Wallie Funk has plenty of stories to a series of columns titled “Pictures of tell. the Past” that ran in the American. What The Anacortes resident — who turns started as a way to showcase Funk’s his93 today — is always ready to share tales torical photographs grew into a breakof growing up on Fidalgo Island, the down of major events in Anacortes’ past. industries that changed the makeup of the He talked about pioneering families, town and his time as the co-owner of the important members of society and the top Anacortes American. businesses from the area. “Anacortes is a fun place to live,” he “When it got started, the town had said. “There’s a lot of old friends, old tim- lots of space, but not much more than ers and interesting history.” that,” Funk said. “A couple of remarkable He said history was something that industries got their start in Anacortes.” always fascinated him, crediting his interThe columns have been collected and
illustrated with historic photographs in the new book “Pictures of the Past: Celebrating 125 Years of Anacortes History,” created by the Anacortes Museum. “It’s a full rendition of the remarkable moments that shaped Anacortes’ history,” Funk said. The book will premiere at the Anacortes American’s 125th anniversary open house 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, May 9 at the Depot Arts & Community Center. The books will be available for $25 each. They will also be available after the open house at the museum and at local bookstores. “It’s like he’s having enjoyable, opinionated conversations in these pages,
holding court for his dear readers,” American Publisher Jack Darnton wrote in the book’s forward. Funk was one of the founders of the Anacortes Museum. He said Anacortes was rich with history and nothing was being done to preserve it. “We were pretty strongly identified with the history movement,” Funk said. “Pictures of the Past: Celebrating 125 Years of Anacortes History,” was edited by museum administrative assistant Elaine Walker. Walker, who previously worked as a reporter at the American, said she’s always loved the “Pictures of the Past” columns.
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Get your copy “Pictures of the Past: Celebrating 125 Years of Anacortes History,” will premiere at the Anacortes American’s 125th anniversary open house 9 a.m. - 2 p.m. Saturday, May 9 at the Depot Arts & Community Center. The books will be available for $25 each. They will also be available after the open house at the museum and at local bookstores. “They were my introduction to Anacortes history,” she said. While at the newspaper, she worked with Funk to transcribe some of the columns — all of which had been heavily revised by Funk himself. “The pages started out neatly double spaced, but sections were crossed out, with revisions typed between the lines. Then, parts of the revisions were struck out, and handwritten changes scrawled in anywhere they would fit. The effect was eye-popping,” Walker wrote in the preface of the book. When it came time for her to work on a book about Anacortes, she decided to use the content already created by Funk. “The entire Anacortes history had already been written,” she said. Walker worked with fellow museum employees Bret Lunsford and Lea DeVere to narrow down the roughly 150 “Pictures of the Past” columns to the 50 contained in the book. They each brought in some of their favorites. Then they found out which important parts of Anacortes’ history were underrepresented. Some columns were eliminated from the running because they were written as part of an ongoing series and could not easily be condensed into one story. Funk also saw the book’s progress at each step and made suggestions, Walker said. Walker said her favorite column in the book details the story of the first man who died after Anacortes was officially made a city. No one knew what to do with the man’s body. It was stored in the back room of the hotel where he was staying and leaders called a town meeting to address the problem. Funk was able to approach the story with a humor that makes it well worth the read, she said. “It’s hilarious,” she said. “It makes you giggle to read it.” Funk’s voice comes through in all the columns, making them seem up-to-date even though they were not written recent-
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ly and were about historical events. “They are witty and relevant,” Walker said. “They show how the city has evolved and why.” The photographs illustrating each column came mainly from the Wallie Funk Collection at the museum. Walker said she tried to select pictures that have not previously been seen. The photos are a major part of the book. People who have been around Anacortes even for a little while should recognize some of the major landmarks and be able to tell how much Anacortes has changed over the past decades, Walker said. This book is great for Anacortes residents and history buffs alike, Walker said. Funk has been around for years and knows most people in town. Several famous families from throughout the history of Anacortes are discussed in the book. “Sometimes, I think Wallie knows everyone,” Darnton said. “His interests are so broad, his curiosity so deep and his passions so strong — he connects with people everywhere, and often enlists them in his efforts for the greater good of his hometown, his state and people everywhere.”
ANACORTES MUSEUM
Top: Friends and family of Anacortes fishermen gathered at the Port of Anacortes dock to wish a safe journey to the fishing fleet as it departed for Alaska in 1957. Above: A rock quarry served as a prison camp on a cliffside east of Deception Pass Bridge from 1910 through 1914. It was dismantled in 1924.
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Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
Read on! Fidalgo Island’s history is well-chronicled Anacortes’ history lives on in more than newspaper accounts and historic photographs. Below are 25 publications that will reward readers with looks at past events, eras and lifestyles from a variety of perspectives. A visit to the Anacortes Museum is a good place to start your search. Staff can help you find what you’re looking for.
“Lost at Sea” Patrick Dillon
In February 1963, two crabbing vessels, the Americus and the Altair, set out from Anacortes toward Dutch Harbor, Alaska. Eleven days later, the hull of one of the ships was found. The other ship was never found – and neither were any of the crew.
“Bijaboji: North to Alaska by Oar” Betty Lowman Carey
In 1937, 22-year-old Betty Lowman “Shipbuilders, Sea Captains, rowed from Guemes Island to Alaska – and Fishermen: The Story of the through some of the most treacherous waters around. In her book she details the Schooner Wawona” daring adventure. Joe Follansbee
“Lance Burdon: A Photographic Journey” Nancy Werner Mathews
Follansbee weaves the tale of the three-masted schooner Wawona, which for 30 years belonged to the Robinson Fishing Co., of Anacortes. The book contains detailed illustrations, historical photos and personal stories.
A collection of Burdon’s photographs are accompanied by the story of his life in early Anacortes written by his “A Bridge Over Troubled Water: granddaughter. Burdon’s photographs The Legend of Deception Pass” begin in the early 1900s and explore Washington state’s pioneer life. Dorothy Nei A collection of stories, photographs “Even Seagulls Cry” and documents related to the history of Agnes Rands the Deception Pass Bridge. This sequel to “Where the Huckleberries Grow” details what life was like “Anacortes (Images of America)” in a logging camp in Anacortes during Bret Lunsford World War II. This book in the Images of America series offers a pictorial history of Ana“First Views: An Early History cortes – including its founding and growth as a port town. The book conof Skagit County” tains more than 200 photographs. Theresa L. Trebon Trebon captures the history of Fidal“Anacortes (Postcards of go Island with images from the Wallie America)” Funk Collection. The book features photographs Funk took and those he Bret Lunsford preserved that were taken by other phoLunsford brings together 15 historitographers. cal postcards for this book in the Postcards of America collection.
“Logs to Lumber” Terry Slotemaker
This book explores the history of the logging and milling industries on Fidalgo, Guemes, Cypress, Burros and Sinclair islands. It includes several historical photographs.
“Pacific Schooner Wawona” Harriet Tracy DeLong
DeLong explores the history of one of largest three-masted schooner ever built in North America, which was in the waters around Anacortes for years. She includes in her tale stories of maritime folklore from the area.
“The Skagit Collection: Our Proud Heritage in Pictures” Published by the Skagit Valley Herald
This book features a collection of historical photographs from throughout Skagit County, including Anacortes.
“The Maiden Of Deception Pass: A Spirit In Cedar” Kenneth C. Hansen
This short book gives the history of the Maiden of Deception Pass story pole carved by Tracey Powell. It features Samish Indian Nation history and culture.
“At Home on Fidalgo Island: A Treasury of Stories, Facts, Art and “The Road of a Boat Builder Start Poetry about Fidalgo Island” Edited by Evelyn Adams to End” Richard “Bud” LeMieux
LeMieux, the founder of Northern Marine in Anacortes, details his career in boatbuilding – starting with building boats as a hobby when he was a kid.
“Fidalgo Fishing”
This collection offers a unique source of information and stories from the people of Fidalgo Island.
“This Isle of Guemes” Helen Troy Elmore
This history of Guemes Island talks about the Samish Indian Nation, the arrival of the ferry and details of the Slotemaker offers a look at the history of the fishing industry in Anacortes. pioneers of the island community. Terry Slotemaker
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Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
“The Exploration of Whidbey, Fidalgo and Guemes Islands”
“Croatian Fishing Families of Anacortes”
Slotemaker examines the history of European explorers who visited the coast of Fidalgo and Guemes islands between 1790 and 1840.
A collection of photographs and original interviews detailing fishing in Anacortes, from salmon fishing on purse seiners to crabbing in Alaska as shown on “Deadliest Catch.”
Terry Slotemaker
Bret Lunsford
“The Geology of Fidalgo Island”
“Two Hands and a Shovel: An illustrated exploration of the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps at Deception Pass State Park”
Terry Slotemaker
This book highlights local rock formations and includes graphics and maps to each of the sights. Slotemaker features several items of Fidalgo Island’s geological history.
Jack Hartt and Sam Wotipka
“Natural Skagit: A Journey from Mountains to Sea” Published by Skagit Land Trust
Photographs and information on the beauty of Skagit County, including Anacortes and Fidalgo Island.
“The Anacortes Story” Dan Wollam
“Chechacos All”
“Bridgeside: Selected Stories of Dick Fallis, Skagit County Historian”
The Civilian Conservation Corps was formed in the 1930s to fight massive national unemployment. Young men were put to work at camps around the country – including at Deception Pass, a Washington state park. Members built up the park, including trails, roads and picnic shelters. This book contains photographs from public and private collections documenting the work of the CCC crews.
This small book published by the Ana- Margaret Willis cortes American in the 1960s features artiWillis details the early settlers of the This collection of writings by historian cles and photos outlining the history of Skagit region, agriculture, the railroads Dick Fallis explores many interesting and Anacortes. colorful stories about early Skagit County. and fishing.
CONGRATULATIONS ANACORTES AMERICAN! 125 years of informing and supporting our community.
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Celebrating History
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Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
Place names add a personal connection to our history according to the Deception Pass Park Foundation. The name was changed to Bowman Bay in 1977.
Anacortes’ rich history is reflected in the names we’ve given to its parks, roads, land features and even the town itself — named after the wife of our own founding father. The Anacortes American staff picked 25 well-known and not so well-known sites that show the diversity of our past and people. Learn where their namesakes came from, what they did when they got here and, in one case, where they’re buried.
Brodniak Hall Walter A. Brodniak
Alice Parchman Newland Park Alice Parchman Newland
Alice DeSomner Parchman was born in 1897 in Wisconsin. She graduated from Anacortes High School, where she was a member of the girls basketball team, and the University of Washington, where she earned a degree in physics. She became a school teacher, married George Browning Newland and had two children. The park at 2313 R Ave. was dedicated in her name in 1975.
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Alice Parchman Newland Park was named after Alice Parchman Newland, pic- Causland Memorial Park tured at left in this photo of the 1915 Anacortes High School girls basketball Harry Leon Causland team. Left to right: Alice Parchman Newland, Mabel Trafton Penz, Bermadine Harry Leon Causland of Guemes Weish, Natalie Baker, Maxine Dodge; Wanda Coopie Fulk Hall and Mildred Island was born to Frank and Fanny CausMoord. land in 1887. He was 31 years old when he entered the service to fight in World War I in 1918. He died four months later on a battlefield in Banthville Hill, France, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. The park, built at 710 N Ave. in the 1920s and named for Causland, is dedicated in his honor and for 14 others from the area who died during the war.
Anacortes
Anne Curtis Bowman
Anne Curtis was born in New Jersey in 1846. She married Anacortes founder Amos Bowman in 1879. After opening a post office here, he named it after her, changing the name a bit to reflect a Spanish sound. The town took on the same name later. Anne died in 1906 at the age of 56.
Dewey Beach
Admiral George Dewey
The Anacortes American reported that the people of Fidalgo City, formerly named Deception and later Dewey, petitioned to change the name of the post office in honor of Admiral George Dewey’s victory at the 1898 Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War. The name of the community on the southwest side of Fidalgo Island was changed to Dewey the same year, according to the Anacortes Museum.
Ben Root Skate Park Ben Root
Ben Root was executive director of the Port of Anacortes and an Anacortes City Council member in the 1990s. He died in March 1997. The 7,500-square-foot concrete skate park named after him is at 2313 R Ave. inside the Alice Parchman Newland Park.
Bowman Bay Amos Bowman
Amos Bowman was the founder of Anacortes in the late 1800s. The bay named in his honor is on the southwest end of Fidalgo Island in Deception Pass State Park. It was originally called Reservation Bay as it was part of a military reservation. “At the turn of the century, Bowman had a wooden dock built at the bay in hopes that it would become a major port, but Bowman’s dream was never realized,”
Walter Brodniak was superintendent of the Anacortes School District from 1971 to 1977. He died in 1982 at the age of 62. Brodniak Hall was built in 1976 along with other construction at the high school and later named after Brodniak. Also named after him was the Walter A. Brodniak Cultural Education Award given each spring to a person or organization that has made an outstanding contribution to the cultural arts.
ANACORTES MUSEUM
Work on the John Storvik Municipal Playground on 32nd Street got under way in 1972 and on hand to take part in the groundbreaking ceremonies were a large turnout of city officials and members of the John Storvik family. Holding shovels and turning over the ground from the left were Park Commission Chairman Ray Separovich, Mayor Jim Rice and Norine ‘Bootie’ Anderson Rieger, niece of Storvik. Others joining in the ceremonies were Gary Nelson (sixth from left, tall man in back), Floyd Lunsford (fifth from left with hat), Paul Luvera (far right) Cami Anderson (girl, center front, later Cami Anderson Mavar), Mable Anderson Larson (ninth from left, gray hair) and Wanda Bondeson Anderson (11th from left, next to Norine Anderson Rieger who has the shovel).
Doug Colglazier Playground Doug Colglazier
Doug Colglazier helped found the Anacortes Parks Foundation board in 1994 and served as its president from 2001 to the end of 2014. He helped guide many of the foundation’s community projects, especially Volunteer Park at 1915 13th St. The play area at Kiwanis Meadows in the park was dedicated in his name in 2010 for the generous donation of his time and talents making the park on a whole possible.
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Guemes Island
Juan Vicente de Güemes Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo
The island to the north of Anacortes was named Isla de Güemes in honor of the Viceroy of Mexico, Juan Vicente de Güemes Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo, by Spanish explorer José María Narváez in 1791, according to guemesisland.info. The island was renamed Lawrence Island in honor of American naval officer James Lawrence in 1841 by explorer Charles Wilkes, who named Guemes Channel, Hornet Harbor for the USS Hornet commanded by Lawrence during the War of 1812. The names reverted back to Guemes after 1847 when the British Admiralty charts were reorganized to reflect British and Spanish names.
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Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
Havekost Road is nearby on the west side of Fidalgo Island.
the new Medical Arts Pavilion in 2012. The name honors Elden “Bud” and Ann Merle, who bequeathed $1.6 million to the Island Hospital Foundation in 2010.
March Point
Hiram and Kate Hilton March
Paul Luvera Memorial Highway
March Point was named after farmer Hiram March and his wife Kate Hilton March, who moved to the tip of the peninsula in 1865, according to Friends of Skagit Beaches. March was called the “pioneer horticulturalist” for his successful seed trials.
Paul Luvera
Marguerite and Don Daniels Field, Alton R. Daniels Stadium The Daniels
Donald B. Daniels attended Anacortes High School and the University of WashHavekost Road ington, excelling in baseball and basketTonjes Henry Havekost ball at both. He married his wife, Marguerite, in 1985. Daniels was known to buy Tonjes Henry Havekost, formerly used sports equipment to pass on to kids of Bremen, Germany, followed Amos in need. He died in 2004 at the age of 65. Bowman to Anacortes in 1876. Shortly thereafter, Havekost acquired 160 acres of The couple contributed to the two fields at Volunteer Park. The Marguerite and land near the Edward L. Shannon estate Don Daniels Field is the Little League/ by Ship Harbor and Burrows Bay. Havekost donated his land to the city for what fastpitch field. The Alton R. Daniels Stabecame Washington Park. A monument to dium with regulation baseball field is next Havekost rests over his grave in the park. to it and named after Daniels’ father.
ANACORTES MUSEUM
Paul Luvera opened Luvera’s Grocery in the Blackmore Building at 702 Commercial Avenue in 1922, according to the Anacortes Museum. He retired from the grocery business in 1957 after serving as a Washington state senator from 1952 to 1957. He died in 1990. The Highway 20 spur coming into Anacortes from Sharpes Corner was named in his honor in June 2000.
Rice Field at Anacortes High School, which will be improved when con- Rice Complex struction to rebuild the high school Jim Rice begins, is named after former mayor Carpenter Jim Rice began serving as Jim Rice, shown here with his wife an Anacortes City Council member in the Margie. 1950s. In 1969, he became mayor, serving
Merle Cancer Care Center Elden “Bud” and Ann Merle
The Merle Cancer Care Center, which originally opened in the Island Hospital Medical Office Building, moved to
on and off for 18 years. Rice died in 1991, shortly after announcing he would not run for re-election. The 9-acre Rice Complex is south of Volunteer Park and west of Anacortes High School. It contains a football/soccer field and 400-meter surfaced track.
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Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
Robinson Cove Ray Robinson Jr.
Ray Robinson Jr. built Robinson’s Anacortes Marina on property just west of U Avenue in 1947. The property, formerly used by lumber mills and a boat building facility, was sold to the Port of Anacortes in 1965. The property later became Murphy’s Marina in late 1969 and Wyman’s Marina starting in 1973. The port demolished the buildings and old dock structures to create an aquatic habitat named Robinson Cove in 2013.
Tommy Thompson and his family outside the station for the Anacortes Railway at Fourth Street and Commercial Avenue. The railway ran 840 feet from First Street to Fourth Street on Commercial Avenue. The passenger car and coal burning steam locomotive were built by Thomas G. Thompson, Jr., from 1965 to 1979. The station was built by Andrew G. Thompson in July 1979. From left to right: Andrew, Sydney, Katy, Anne, Headen, Ethan and Thomas Thompson.
Sharpe Park Kathleen Sharpe
Sharpe Park was deeded in 1977 to the county by Kathleen Sharpe, according to the Skagit County website. “Dedicated to the memory of my beloved husband, Wallace J. Sharpe, and his father, Thomas J. Sharpe, who were the settlers on this property. It is my desire that for all time this property shall provide a respite for mankind’s body and soul to reflect upon the beauty of God’s creation.” The park is off Rosario Road on southwest Fidalgo Island.
Shugarts Playground Keith Shugarts
Keith Shugarts was a fifth-grade teacher and physical education specialist at Fidalgo Elementary School. He died in 1984 at the age of 41 from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or ALS. Shugarts, along with his wife Sally, organized a basketball tournament in 1983 to raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association called the Shugarts Slowbreak Basketball Tournament. Shugarts Playground is a halfacre park at 10th Street and N Avenue next to the Anacortes Public Library.
Storvik Park John Storvik
John Storvik, who changed his name from Anderson, worked for Coos Bay Pulp Mill and was known as one of its largest shareholders. He owned several homes in the Anacortes area and willed the bulk of his estate to building a park. Storvik Park at 32nd Street and O Avenue has a Little League ball field, basketball courts, picnic shelter and the Our Town Our Park playground built by the community. It was dedicated in 1973.
ANACORTES MUSEUM
the historic Great Northern depot on R Avenue to Commercial Avenue, starting in August 1979. Thompson’s dream was to run the railway along the northeast perimeter of the island. The Tommy Thompson Parkway is about 3.3 miles of paved path from 11th Street to the train trestle across Fidalgo Bay to March Point. It follows the path of the former Burlington Northern Railway. It was dedicated in Thompson’s name in January 2005.
John and Doris Tursi Park John and Doris Tursi
on Fidalgo Island from Illinois in the late 1870s. They cleared land just west of the spit named in their honor where they built a home and raised cattle. The property was occupied by three subsequent Weaverling generations, according to the Friends of Skagit Beaches.
Whitney School
Rienza and Kate Bradley Whitney
Rienza Whitney and his wife Kate settled on Fidalgo Island in the late 1880s. Both were involved in the community, Kate as clerk of the Anacortes School Board from 1898 to 1919. When the former Anacortes Hotel was made into a school in 1906, it was named Whitney School in honor of the Whitney family. The school moved to its current location at 1200 M Avenue in the late 1920s. The Whitneys had six children — two became teachers.
John and Doris Tursi started donating early to the city’s fund to conserve Anacortes Community Forest Lands and kept on donating. The couple also contributed time and money to the Skagit Land Trust, Soroptimist International of Anacortes, Anacortes Salvation Army and the Humane Society of Skagit Valley. Tursi Park on Pennsylvania Avenue near the Anacortes Airport opened in summer Williams Gym 2009. It has a cedar log pavilion, wetland Charles Williams area, nature trail, picnic tables, playground Tommy Thompson Parkway Charles Williams went from teaching equipment and zip line. Tommy Thompson shop and drafting in 1951 at Anacortes Tommy Thompson built and operated High School to teaching health and social the narrow-gauge Forney-type steam loco- Weaverling Spit studies at the junior high, where he was Frances and James Weaverling motive and three passenger cars of the named principal in 1952. He also coached Anacortes Railway. The railway ran from Frances and James Weaverling arrived football, track and basketball at the two
schools. He became the high school vice principal and athletic director in 1955. He moved up to principal in 1959, where he served for about 20 years. “Being around people, going to all the activities and trying to develop a good relationship between parents, students and teachers were really the highlites of being principal,” Williams said in an article in the high school newspaper in 1983, the same year the gym was named after him.
Wyman’s Ramp Don and Rayetta Wyman
Don and Rayetta Wyman ran Wyman’s Marina on Port of Anacortes property from 1973 to 1998. The business served the boating community with parts, repair services, a 75-ton crane and fuel dock. The roll-on, roll-off Wyman’s Ramp just west of the site is used today for transport businesses serving the San Juan Islands. Sources: Anacortes Museum, ancestry. com, Northwest Digital Archives, Skagit Publishing - Our Century, Deception Pass Park Foundation, Skagit River Journal and Friends of Skagit Beaches.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Celebrating History
Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
here’s to smooth sailing for another 125 years!
ANACORTES.ORG 360.293.7911
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Celebrating History
Products and services changed, but American remained advertiser’s first choice
Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
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Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Celebrating History
Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
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Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
HISTORY BY THE DECADES: 1900-1909 On Jan. 5, 2000, the Anacortes American published Our Century, a special section that looked back at Anacortes’ last 100 years using stories from the Anacortes American. Publisher Duncan Frazier, staffers Jon Bauer, Gale Fiege Mann and Nancy Walbeck — and columnist Wallie Funk — recounted important trends and events a decade at a time. It remains an impressive piece of work that has become a “go-to source” for an overview on Anacortes history.
A
nacortes started the 1900s having already accepted its loss in the race to become the metropolis of the West. But that didn’t mean that Anacortes had to accept a future of a backwards town with no prosperity to offer its residents. Anacortes boosters, including the owners of the American, showed no shame in promoting Anacortes and crowing the news each time a new mill or cannery announced it was locating here.
• North American Fisheries announces • A telephone line is laid from Anaplans for a cannery with a capacity for cortes to the San Juan Islands. 3,500 to 4,000 cans daily.
1902
• A large storm sinks the steamers Laura and Fawn at Union Wharf and washes the Cupid ashore. • The steamer Bruce is in town to take a load of 375,000 shingles and lumber, the first such lumber export from Anacortes. • The Alaska Steamship Co. files a complaint against Will A. Lowman and the White Crest Cannery because of what it calls illegal fish traps at the north end of Cypress Island. • Several business are lost when an 1900 entire city block burns. There is no fire • The W. R. Rodgers Mill and Box department to fight the blaze, and little Factory receives orders for a half million water pressure in the lines. boxes, including 200,000 fruit boxes destined for California. 1903 • An angry mob threatens to run Japa• A local volunteer fire department nese workers at the Rodgers mill out of with 35 members is organized with a hose town. company, ladder company and chemical company. An informal levy of businesses 1901 will support the effort. • City fathers talk of improving “Block • A dispatch from Washington, D.C., confirms that Anacortes and Friday Har- 75” (Later Great Northern Park; later still, bor are now considered “subports of Causland Memorial) into the city’s first entry,” allowing vessels to enter and clear park, and others want Anacortes to buy those ports without making trips to Seat- part of Cap Sante for the same purpose. tle or Tacoma.
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As the introduction to the section states so well, these are stories that hopefully will give our readers “a sense of what came before us, how we arrived at this point and even what might be in store for us in the future.” Following are condensed versions of the staff’s work. Complete stories and year-by-year chronologies can be found on our website, goanacortes.com. Click on the Our Century window on the right side of the home page.
1904
• The Rodgers saw mill is in ruins, despite an effort by 500 men to douse a blaze. The two-inch water pipe to the mill had little pressure. Rodgers rebuilds bigger and better. • Work continues to improve the water service to the mills, but the American recommends the purchase of a fire boat. A • A livestock law is now in effect: Horses, mules, cattle, sheep and goats may not run loose east of D Avenue and north of 10th Street.
1905 • Melville Curtis donates property on Cap Sante to the city for a public park. • H. A. March, one of the area’s pioneers, passes on Feb. 9. He came here in 1853. • The canneries are operating at full capacity, with workers earning $2 to $4 a day.
1907 • A new smoke law passed by the city council brings a threat from Anacortes Lumber and Box that it will close its mill if the law is not repealed. After much discussion, the law stands, but the mill stays open. • City’s population is estimated at 4,500 to 6,000, but the paper notes that many “residents” are working on ships and in mines.
1908 • Councilman W.G. Beard convinces the council to purchase 1,200 acres of land for a city park, south of town with view of Burrows Bay and the strait. • A new rock quarry, with labor to be supplied by convicts, will be established near Deception Pass. • Just before Christmas Andrew Carnegie announces a $10,000 gift to the city to build a public library in Anacortes.
1906
1909
• Work has finished on the Burrows • Plans for the library are announced. Island lighthouse, which stands 65 feet tall. It will be two stories. Construction starts • Forty fishermen from Gloucester, in fall. Maine arrive to work on the Robinson • There’s a curfew in effect now; all Fisheries schooners and settle in Ana- those under 15 must be in by 8 p.m. cortes.
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Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
1910-1919 Enjoying the bounty of nature T
ons of fish and tons of logs. The most consistent news of the decade beginning with 1910 was that involving use of the area’s natural resources. To those who ran canneries and mills and enjoyed the tremendous boom times, the salmon and the trees must have seemed unending.
1910 • Women win the right to vote in the state, and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union is the most active group in Anacortes, with a visit by national leader Carrie Nation, “noted saloon smasher.” • Census shows Anacortes still leading center of population with 4,168 residents. Mount Vernon had population of only 2,517.
1911 • Anacortes Lumber & Box touted as the largest box factory on the Pacific Coast.
• University of Washington Professor from the Bering Sea with 137,000 fish Meany talks about Indian lore at the for- weighing 400 tons. mal opening of public library, which issues • Deception Pass ferry takes 150 peo701 cards in its first year. ple on its first run. • The new Great Northern Railroad Depot, built at a cost of $25,000, opens for 1914 business June 28. • The cultural highlight of the year (and for many years) is the summer arts 1912 celebration, the Chautauqua. • Dr. Samuel Gordon Brooks opens an • Telephone cable laid to Guemes. office over the candy store. • Between the tides, Walter Britt swims • Salmon cannery production leads all across Deception Pass. It takes him five in Puget Sound region, from Blaine to minutes to swim the 500 feet. Seattle. Companies include Fidalgo Island, Alaska Packers, Porter Fish, Coast Fish 1915 and Apex Fish. • Nine lumber and shingle plants are • In the election of 1912, W. H. Taft operating in Anacortes. wins in Skagit County, but in the first pre• Elks dedicate new lodge at Sixth and cinct of Anacortes, the winner isn’t the Q. future president Woodrow Wilson, but • High School class of 1915 numbers socialist Eugene V. Debs. 15. • Cannery workers numbering 300 1913 gather at City Hall to protest the employ• The forerunner of Washington Park, ment of Japanese (for lower wages) by 181 acres, is purchased for the city. local companies. A race riot nearly ensues. • The Havekost monument is erected. • The codfish schooner Alice returns
1917 • Sloan Shipbuilding opens on Guemes Island. • “China men” and Filipinos fight at canneries. Anacortes American reports of these skirmishes include lots of racist, derogatory language. • Lumber mill workers strike for shorter days. Mill owners say plants run better on 10-hour shifts.
1918 • Lack of railroad cars because of war effort means that shingle mills close.
1919 • W. A. Lowman gets the first airmail letter delivered to Anacortes. W. E. Boeing carries the letter to Lowman in a postal bag he flies from Vancouver, B.C. to Seattle. • Orator William Jennings Bryan, known later for the Scopes Monkey Trial, speaks in Anacortes. Note: Issues from 1916 were not available.
20 Months is not 125 years... but we are proud to make our own history “It has been a bit over a month since Mom’s passing and a time to reflect back on her time at Lighthouse. I cannot thank you enough for the kindness and wonderful atmosphere that you have there…..If Shellie and I can ever help you by communicating with potential residents families please don’t hesitate to share this letter with them. We are very fortunate to have the Lighthouse in the Anacortes community. Opened August 2013
Making Anacortes a better place.
A community for Alzheimer’s, & Dementia memory loss
Sincerely, Chip and Shellie Bogosian”
Lissa Sterbentz, Executive Director
3502 K Avenue Anacortes, WA 98221 www.lighthousememorycareanacortes.com 360-399-7263
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Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
1920-1929 Boom before the bust
T
he 1920s opened in Anacortes reading like the previous decade, with headlines touting the unbridled processing of seemingly unlimited resources. But as the decade wore on, the natural resources and their markets began to wear just a little thinner, and the news of housing and retail construction, park development, increasing tourism and social activities began to take up more space on the front pages of the Anacortes American. Perhaps hoping it would simply go away, the Oct. 31, 1929, edition of the Anacortes American made no mention of the infamous Black Thursday Stock market crash and offered no hints at the coming problems of the 1930s.
1920 • Census count reveals that Anacortes has a population of 5,284, still ahead of Mount Vernon at 3,341.
1921 • Crab industry is growing as is the canning of local fruit. • Civic league charges City Council does its work in committee instead of in public. • Cranberry Lake dam breaks and huge body of water crashes down the hills to the beach. • Arcata federal revenue boat (and later the Coast Guard) regularly stops booze boats to confiscate Canadian alcohol. One summer day, Boy Scouts witness the Arcata capture a fleeing booze boat ANACORTES MUSEUM / WALLIE FUNK COLLECTION and cheer from the beach. • Floods on the Skagit flats leave Ana- The E. K. Wood Mill on Burrows Bay cut 200,000 feet of lumber in one eight-hour shift in 1923. This photo was shot from the west. Skyline Marina dominates the scene today. cortes without rail service.
1922 • Pacific Highway is extended with a 1927 • Doctors in the city join together to spur into the city. • The Port of Anacortes is formed. • Mill companies contribute to the take over Anacortes Hospital. • Tuberculosis cases number 146 in the • An auto ferry from Sidney, British purchase of a new pumper for city fire county. department. Columbia, to Anacortes is planned. • Codfish schooner Alice, a fixture in Anacortes for many years, is sold to a 1925 1923 movie studio in California. • Reclamation of Padilla Bay is pro• Consolidated Paper Co. pulp mill posed with 10,000 acres of submerged opens. 1928 • Ferry to Sidney is very successful and tideland to be diked, drained and filled. • J.C. Penney building opens at Sixth • W.T. Morrison house at 34th and and Commercial. attracts thousands of visitors. Puget Sound Navigation plans further development of Commercial (now the Nantucket Inn) is • Northern Canneries process Skagit completed in October. ferry runs into the San Juan Islands. valley fruit, berries and vegetables, includ-
• Fund-raising effort begins for new hospital. • Betty Lowman, 14, swims the Guemes Channel.
1929
• The Deception Pass bridge is in the planning stages as is the new city water system being developed at Avon on the Skagit River. • Anacopper Copper Co. builds 40-foot mine shaft. • “Modern” hospital to open at a cost of $25,000 between Ninth and 10th and M ing cabbage, and sauerkraut juice is laud1926 1924 ed as a “healthful morning-after bever- and N streets. • Poultry farms number 150 on Fidalgo • Three ferries operate during season age.” • Forty new homes are built with an and Guemes producing 6 million eggs in on Anacortes to Sidney run. average cost of $3,000 each. • Airport opens and an Anacortes cou1929. • Goldenseal and ginseng crop, primar- ple celebrate by being married in the air. • Puget Sound Power and Light runs a transmission line from Burlington provid- ily from a farm on 33rd, nets a crop worth • First edition of the high school news$12,000. ing “unlimited supply of electric power.” paper, the SeaHawk, goes to press.
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Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
1930-1939
Making do during lean years F
or many, the decade started off well, and 1930 turned out to be a critical year for Anacortes, with decisions being made then that we live with still today. The notion of a Cap Sante Waterway became reality in January of 1930. The city committed to build a waterline from the Skagit River to Anacortes in March 1930, and we depend on that municipal utility today. A new Anacortes Hospital (now the public library) opened in June, and Gus Hensler donated 120 acres to the city for what is now the Mount Erie portion of the Anacortes Community Forest Lands. But by the end of 1930 the Depression had reached Anacortes. Mills were closing, wages were being cut, fishermen handed out free fish to hungry families and nearly every service club in town had regular relief efforts that lasted until the latter years of the decade.
1930 • Dredging of the new Cap Sante Waterway begins. • City agrees to seek a $500,000 bond issue to build a 24-inch waterline from the Skagit River to Anacortes. • The will of the late Gus Hensler is recorded in Skagit County. It gives 120 acres at Mount Erie to the city for use as a park. Hensler was a county pioneer who helped lay out the city’s center and create Causland Park. • “Outsiders warned, keep out of city,” blares the newspaper headline detailing the Chamber of Commerce’s plan to register local citizens for work. “There are enough men in this city to more than fill any openings,” according to the chamber.
1933 • The E.K. Wood lumber mill on Burrows Bay will reopen on July 1 after a three-year closure due to poor markets. • The U.S. Frigate Constitution, “Old Ironsides,” arrives for a six-day visit. City holds parties for crew; 27, 689 people visit the historic ship during its visit.
1934 • Puget Sound seiners are on strike over sockeye salmon prices. Seiners want 60 cents per fish; canneries want to pay 40 cents. Cheap Alaska salmon is flooding the market, canneries claim. • Anacortes Bank of Commerce finally reopens after 18 months of restricted operations. The action frees $60,000 for depositors.
1935 • Deception Pass bridge opens for traffic; city holiday proclaimed as Mayor Harry Mansfield cites completion of “decades of work.” • Anacortes City Council says it’s ready to ban slot machines from the city as soon as the county prosecutor does the same in other cities in Skagit County. • The Black Ball Line’s ferry Kalakala visits Anacortes and Guemes Island.
1932
Thank you for making our 85th celebration possible
1936
• Anacortes holds its first Marineers’ Pageant. • All Works Progress Administration projects in Anacortes are halted after city balks at its share of cost. Oakes Avenue improvement project is 90 percent complete; 100 men are idle, but a couple of weeks later the city OKs $1,000 to con1931 • Citizens vote to spend $90,000 tinue the work on Oakes. to build a new high school; 83 percent 1938 approve. The school is finished by fall and • Anacortes Lumber Co. sawmill burns opens for 271 students. to the ground with the loss of 150 jobs. • A citywide mass meeting is called to hear plans for getting federal relief funds. Most feasible option: $500,000 for construction of a toll bridge over Deception Pass. • “Hunger-driven men raid Safeway Store,” reads the headline. Six men are arrested, and the International Labor Defense comes to their aid.
The Burton Clock • photo by Leslie Dorn
1939 • Anacortes Veneer Inc. reports it has signed 200 of the 240 stockholders needed for completion of its new organization, by December the cooperative venture has started operations and made its first shipment of 60,000 feet of veneer wood. Note: Issues for the first half of 1935 and all of 1937 and 1938 were not available.
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Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
1940-1949 Heeding the call to arms W
orld War II was the story of the 1940s. And while Anacortes did pretty well supplying fish for soldiers and spruce for airplanes, it did one thing best of all: it provided soldiers, lots of soldiers. By 1949, we were back to arguing among ourselves about the little things and the big things. In that year, the biggest controversy was the city council’s decision to opt out of Daylight Savings Time. Guemes Island got the electricity it had been seeking since before the war, and the city was poised, although it didn’t know it, for the upcoming decade of growth, change, and new citizens.
1940 • Mayor C.E. Peters appoints city’s first nine-member planning commission; zoning of downtown is group’s first order of business. • Three local firms are busy with defense contracts due to the war in Europe. Morrison Mill is supplying airplane spruce; E.K. Woods and Puget Sound Pulp and Timber mills also are busy. • In Anacortes, 671 local men must register with the Selective Service Act.
1941 • More than 250 men will be stationed at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in a $3.79 million project to build a seaplane base Anacortes tried to land. • Four Anacortes salmon canneries are running overtime to handle the best salmon run since 1919. •Arthur Donald Blackrud, 23, is reported as the first Anacortes casualty of World War II. He was killed at Pearl Harbor, and he had attended Anacortes High School before enlisting in the Navy.
ANACORTES MUSEUM
War Memorial Field at Anacortes High School was dedicated in 1946, honoring the city’s 20 war dead from World War II. The Columbian School to the right was demolished in 1965.
1943
• Anacortes High School offers “commando class” to prepare boys for eventual military basic training. • Anacortes Shipways, with 689 on pay1942 roll, launches the largest wooden boat • Anacortes is included in Military made in the U.S. since World War I. The Zone 1, a designation that forbids any “Western Larch” is a 280-foot oceanJapanese, even U.S.-born, from residing in going barge. Contract calls for five more such barges, all going to the Army. the zone. • Safeway announces construction of a new store at 10th Street and Commercial 1944 Ave. • Of the 31 boys scheduled for gradu• The entire 1942 salmon pack is set ation soon at Anacortes High School, 21 aside by the War Production Board for have already enlisted in the military and military and Lend-Lease use. the rest expect to go in a few months. • War Production Board orders closure of Anacortes Pulp Co. to conserve materi1945 als. • Anacortes witnesses “the greatest fish • Twenty-five tons of scrap metal colyear since 1911,” with an average daily lected in “Salvage for Victory” drive. haul of pink salmon running at 100,000 fish at Fisherman’s Packing Co. plant.
1946
1948
• Petitions circulate seeking the paving of Commercial Avenue from 11th Street to 37th Street. • AHS football coach Richard Wooten cancels team practice when 90 percent of the team is called in to the canneries to handle an unprecedented salmon run. • State Lands commissioner says no to timber-cutting at Heart Lake. Anacortes “will find this state forest a useful and interesting playground,” he says. • War Memorial Field is dedicated during the Anacortes-Mount Vernon football game. The city’s 20 war dead from World War II are honored.
• Anacortes Veneer Inc. announces plans to build $500,000 “hard board” plywood plant here. • Anacortes Kiwanis Club purchases 40-acre tract at the top of Mount Erie for $400; public access is pledged. • Archie Brown, killed in the invasion of Europe, is laid to rest in Grandview Cemetery. He is the first of 18 men believed killed in action to be returned home.
1949
• The electricity is turned on for Guemes Island. • Anacortes will remain on standard 1947 time, refusing to join the rest of the nation • Anacortes City Hall moves into the on Daylight Savings Time and marking a local community building, formerly the victory by area farmers over commercial Elks’ home. and industrial supports of DST.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Celebrating History
Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
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1950-1969
Anacortes finds new life A
nacortes and its economic situation in mid-century were the reverse of the old saying about March weather. The city entered the 1950s like a lamb, but, gaining momentum, it roared into the 1960s like a lion. Barely into the ‘50s, a conspiracy of events signaled the beginning of a decade that, before it ran its course, would be a springboard to a community of which pioneer settlers who stoked the engines of the railroad boom could only dream.
1956 • Texaco is negotiating with landowners on March Point. • Mike Demopolis donates $80,000 worth of property near Cap Sante to the Port of Anacortes. And a federal grant is secured to dredge the waterway for the marina. • Shell’s employment reaches 600 with an annual payroll of $3 million.
1957
• A road is built to the summit of Mount Erie. • The Bonneville Power Administration lays a submarine power cable from Anacortes to the San Juan Islands. • Bobo the Gorilla arrives at the Lowman home.
• Texaco starts construction on March Point. • A new school, Fidalgo, will be built on Gibralter. • The 57-year-old Pioneer Shingle Mill is the last shingle mill in town. • Voters approve a council-manager government after a second trip to the polls to address the issue, following defeat in 1953. • The Anacortes Museum of History is authorized and its board is established by Mayor Anthony “Tony” Mustachich.
1952
1958
1950 • Both the Marineers’ Pageant and Civic Concerts are suspended.
1951
• The Wawona, the three-masted sail• Archie French is hired as the city’s ing schooner that was a familiar sight in first manager. Anacortes between 1914 and 1948 when • Texaco’s refinery starts operation. it brought cod to Anacortes canneries, has been sold and will now take tourists to 1959 Hawaii. • Anacortes participates in a mock • Voters reject the first attempt to attack of the city by enemy bombers. change to a council-manager form of gov• A new 35-bed hospital is recomernment. mended by consultants.
1953 • SHELL PICKS LOCAL SITE — that headline fills an entire front page of the daily Anacortes Bulletin for June 2. The $75 million plant will employ 600 on 800 acres of March Point. • Bobo leaves for his new home at Woodland Park Zoo.
1954
SOROPTIMISTS CELEBRATING HISTORY Chartered in 1948, SI of Anacortes began with just 23 hardworking business women with dreams of doing what is best for women and girls in our community. Many of our scholarships today are named after some of these early members, honoring them for their tireless work and dedication. The Hospital Loan Equipment Program was the club’s first endeavor, serving the community with hospital items free of charge. In 1967 the Thrift Shop (“Bargain Bungalow”) became our first service project, generating funds to give back to the community. After its humble beginnings, today the Soroptimist Thrift Shop has grown, moving to its present location at 3rd and “O” Avenue in May, 2002. The new shop was created in part by moving the old Children’s wing of the Anacortes Library to a vacant lot purchased by the club (a huge undertaking). The shop was added onto and remodeled over the ensuing years and is now very successful and a great asset to our community. Club membership is currently at 97 and each member volunteers at the shop. Proceeds from the shop enable us to support our many programs, awards, scholarships, and community service projects locally and world-wide. Come by and visit our Thrift Shop in Anacortes located at 1107 3rd Street. We have something for everyone at bargain prices! A big Thank You to the community for all their support and donations. We have been voted “Best Thrift Shop” and “Most Community Minded” for the last three years.
Thrift Shop Hours: Tuesdays 2 pm - 8 pm Fridays 11 am - 8 pm Your clean, smoke-free, re-salable donations gladly accepted. Donation Drop off Hours: 7 am - 5 pm Tuesdays and Fridays.
1960 • Washington State Ferries moves its terminal from downtown Anacortes to its new Ship Harbor location. Gov. Albert Rosellini’s wife opens the new terminal; a total of four trips are made daily to Sidney, B.C. • Local residents pass a $800,000 bond to build a new hospital at 26th Street and M Avenue.
• Shell begins construction and starts operation. 1961 • Voters approve $500,000 in school • Volunteers help clear brush at the improvements. Mount Erie summit to make way for sight-seeing platforms and steps. The Air 1955 Force has removed its radar tower there, • A study by the Skagit County PUD but in its place will go a repeater for the predicts Anacortes’ population will be county sheriff’s radios and a TV transmit12,800 by 1990. It currently is 8,500. ter.
Soroptimist International of Anacortes
Celebrating History
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Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
1962 • Anacortes is awarded status as an All-America City by the National Municipal League and Look magazine. After a lengthy campaign, Anacortes is honored for its major improvements in schools, streets, hospital and port. • The First Anacortes Arts and Crafts Festival opens on Commercial Avenue with an estimated 15,000 visitors.
Left to right, Paul Luvera, Wallie Funk, Bud Strom, Jerry Mansfield, Madge Stafford and Scott Richards all played major roles in Anacortes’ evolution into an All-American City.
1963 • Shell expands and renovates with a $550,000 improvement project. • A new highway is built connecting Sharpe’s Corner with the Swinomish channel bridge.
1964 • Central Grade School is renamed Anacortes Junior High School and will house the district’s seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders. Grade-schoolers will be moved to an expanded Island View. • A heavy windstorm with gusts around 93 miles per hour damages the Robinson marina on Guemes Channel. Fifteen boats are sunk. • Partners John Webber and Wallie Funk, publishers since 1950, sell their shares of the Anacortes American to the Skagit Valley Publishing Co. as the two papers consolidate.
1965 • Tommy Thompson proposes a narrow-gauge railway between the state ferry terminal and Sunset Beach at Washington Park.
1966 • The three-masted schooner La Merced arrives in Anacortes to be scuttled and used a breakwater at the Sea Craft Marina on Guemes Channel. • Head Start gets its start in Anacortes.
ANACORTES MUSEUM
• The Northwest Aluminum Corp. announces its plans to build a $100 million plant on Guemes Island that would employ 2,000. Opposition mounts quickly, but the county approves a necessary rezone.
vert the old hospital into a new public • The Anacortes Museum of Histolibrary. ry moves into the old Carnegie Library • Harry Davidson announces his plans building. to develop 425 acres in Skyline with homes and a marina. 1969 • Western Washington State College 1968 buys 47 acres at Shannon Point for devel1967 • The collision of a Shell Oil Co. tanker opment of a marine sciences campus. • Months after its announcement, truck and a train on March Point results in • Snohomish County PUD announces Northwest Aluminum says it will not build a huge fire that destroys a structure built its plans to build a $200 million nuclear on Guemes. by Leon Munks’ grandfather that served plant on tiny Kiket Island, just south of • City accepts a bid of $53,000 to con- as the county’s first trading post. Fidalgo Island.
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Congratulations to the Anacortes American on a Great
125 YEARS!
Celebrating History
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
23
Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
1970-1979 Dealing with a downturn T
he 1970s served as a coming-of-age for Anacortes and its residents, with a plunge into modern government and the high cost of running water and sewer plants. Although the rest of the country was taking sides on the Vietnam War, Anacortes’ hometown paper only hinted at the trauma of that war. Mill jobs were trickling away, and the city had taken over older homes to provide shoreline, urban-renewal industrial land for job development. The city was hit with ongoing drug trafficking and dealing, and a young populace that pretty much followed the national standard of acceptance of drugs.
1971
1974
• A barge loading at Texaco spills 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel, fouling Guemes Island beaches and killing more than 30 birds. About 150 people rally, including young people, frantically trying to save birds and shoreline. Texaco uses skimmers and straw to soak up fuels, and blames a faulty valve for accident. • Shell Oil begins $25 million expansion. • Shannon Point buys 50 acres from Port of Anacortes for $100,000 to build marine center.
• Anacortes commercial fisherman protest the Boldt decision, giving Native American fisherman 50 percent of the harvest. • Snelson Anvil buys urban-renewal property. • Publishers Forest Products, the last of the mills, lays off 52 of its 235 employees, a serious impact to the local economy.
1972
1975 • Meeting on forest lands urges timber harvesting, but large audience has questions about environmental impacts, forest land upkeep and amount of revenue to be realized. • Scott Paper disputes the EPA’s lawsuit that states its sulfite mill is creating pollution.
lost their lives while working at sea is completed. • The city drafts its first comprehensive plan.
1977 • Safeway’s request to vacate 12th street for a parking lot draws support and criticism.
1978 • Scott Paper mill, built in 1924, closes, throwing 79 out of work. Port buys some of its land, Snelson, the rest. • Evergreen Island blocks the Department of Natural Resources from development on Heart Lake. • The federal government tells city officials they must build a secondary-sewer plant at a cost of $15.5 million; city officials continue to stonewall.
• City Council imposes water moratorium because sections of the town can’t be 1970 reached by water system, especially west • School district loses key levy vote, of D Avenue and Cap Sante east of Sixth closes Whitney and Mount Erie schools; Street. many teachers laid off. • Drug dragnet nabs 14 on charges, 1976 • Western Washington State College including heroin, marijuana and hashish. 1979 • The Fidalgo Pool opens. students do a study and recommend city • Two Shell Oil employees are killed in • Skyline’s $13.5 million suit against should use its scenic setting as an “asset,” 1973 a fire at the refinery. the city is settled for a $50,000 purchase of and develop restaurants and stores on • Discussions of a third refinery, Alaska • The city pool has wavering support, a the Skyline water tank. Fidalgo Bay. They also recommend buildPetrofining, opens. The plant would be on roller coaster ride that ends in a Novem• Seafarer’s Memorial to those who ing a swimming pool. 2,000 acres on the Swinomish Channel. ber levy failure.
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Celebrating History
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Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
1980-1989 Seas of suffering T
he mysterious and tragic sinking of two Anacortes-built and Anacortes-manned fishing boats on Valentine’s Day in 1983, and the loss of 14 lives in the Bering Sea, struck the town like a shock wave. Later that decade, Anacortes would suffer an injury of a different sort, a monumental oil spill from an oil barge that overturned and sank off Shannon Point, Jan. 31, 1988. Estimates put the amount at 67,000 to 90,000 gallons, but the barge went down with 368,000 gallons on board and no guarantee it could be safely salvaged.
1982
1983
• “The greatest tragedy ever experienced by a city” happens when two fishing boats from Anacortes, with 14 aboard, go down in the Bering Sea on Valentine’s 1980 Day. The sinking of the Americus and the • Both refineries are hit with an Altair stuns city residents, who gather 11-week strike. 3,000-strong in a downtown prayer vigil. • Cypress Island’s owner proposes a • Publishers transitions into a co-operbig resort. ative venture.
1981 • A local teacher is busted selling cocaine and several fishermen are targeted because “of the ease of transport” of drugs in Anacortes. • Publishers mill lasts until October, then closes, putting 159 out of work.
1985
• The Cap Sante Boat Haven expan• J. C. Penny’s announces it will close at sion begins. year’s end. • Jim Rice is elected mayor under the • The proposed Stockwell Marina on strong mayor form of government. Weaverling Spit is not approved by shore• A plan to extend 32nd street west line hearings board. (through the forest lands), then north to • Swinomish Tribal Bingo opens. Anacopper Road, meets with opposition.
1986
• The state ferry Hyak hits and jams on a reef at Shannon Point; 275 people shuttled ashore by Coast Guard. • Sugiyo plans to build a surimi, or fake crab plant, on urban-renewal land with $6.5 million in redevelopment bonds. • Dakota Creek plans $7 million in improvements. • The city accepts $9.6 million sewer grant from state in lieu of being sued by state ecology department. • Best Friends Bunnies, later Bunnies By The Bay, is launched.
1988 • A major oil spill occurs Jan. 31 when Olympic Tug’s barge leaving Texaco sinks off Shannon Point, dumping 46,200 gallons of crude oil and going down with 368,000 gallons still on board. This is just the first of several oil spills and environmental damage concerns this year.
1989
• Friends of the Forest argues against timber harvest in the city forest lands, and the city takes over funding and puts ACFL in city parks. But the forest board decides to cut timber to raise money, although city surveys show city residents don’t want any more timber harvesting. • Burl Ives moves to town. • Mayor Jim Rice lectures a packed public hearing in City Hall, accusing some of “racism” for trying to change a 1984 bed-and-breakfast ordinance so a black • The Port gives the go-ahead to full couple, Creamola and Carleton Mandevelopment at Cap Sante. ning, would be shut out of the business. 1987 • The state says “no” on extra Sidney • Anacortes Plywood Mill co-op is fall- The proposed change didn’t pass, and the ferry run. Ferries are down to two because Mannings successfully continued as inn ing behind on payments. “there are not enough boats.” owners.
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Celebrating History
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Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
1990-1999 Efforts to preserve history, embrace software I
ing mud flats and beaches in the bay. The f the 20th Century’s first decade in state fines Texaco $20,000 in addition to Anacortes was about the mills and canneries that fed the city in its early years, $5 million in clean-up costs. then its last decade was a final farewell to those industries and a witness to changes in 1992 the town’s economic make-up and skyline. • The Custom Plywood mill at 35th and V Avenue, now closed, burns down in an 1990 apparent arson fire. The plant opened in • A group of parents protests a deci- 1939 as Anacortes Veneer, Inc., a cooperasion by the Anacortes School District to tive venture of worker-shareholders. use a specific reading curriculum in kindergarten through sixth grades that they 1993 say promotes Satanism and witchcraft. In • Turmoil and turnover at the Anathe end a review panel finds the material cortes Police Department. In an effort is appropriate. to force his retirement, the city hires a • An Anacortes man is arrested by fed- former FBI agent, Pat Beattie, to oversee eral agents who say he smuggled 42 tons police chief Tony Lippe. Lippe takes a of marijuana through Anacortes in 1986 medical leave and later resigns, as Beattie and 1987. is made acting police chief.
1991 • While off-loading the Exxon Los Angeles at the Texaco refinery dock a pump bursts and spills approximately 210,000 gallons of Alaskan crude oil. About 4,200 gallons reaches Fidalgo Bay, killing 35 birds, oiling another 36 and foul-
1994 • After two levies fail to earn enough votes, the commissioners for the Fidalgo Pool and Fitness Center announce they will close the pool while plans are made to reorganize.
1995
• The pool reopens with a combination of volunteer staff and donations, until a more modest levy request passes. • Burl Ives, Anacortes resident, folk singer and actor, dies after a long illness. Friends, such as Eddie Albert, John Denver and Randy Sparks of the New Christie Minstrels perform at his memorial service. • The Fidalgo Center opens its doors, housing the Anacortes Senior Center and Head Start.
1996 • The Samish Indian Nation wins its long-fought battle to re-establish its standing with the federal government as a recognized tribe.
1997 • Local officials and business leaders undertake a campaign to fight a decision by the Washington State Ferry system to cancel the international run between Anacortes and Sidney, B.C. The campaign works as the state Transportation Commission agrees to keep the run active
while efforts are made to market the route and increase ridership.
1998 • Six Skagit County men die in a flash fire at Equilon’s Puget Sound Refining Co. when a six-story drum at the delayed coking unit is opened prematurely and high-temperature, partially processed material pours from the drum and ignites.
1999 • Anacortes loses two of its historical icons. Both the Anacortes Lumber and Box smokestack and the Semar Block building are razed because of concerns about safety. • Sun Healthcare Systems, a software developer, purchases property along the Fidalgo Bay waterfront for its future headquarters, now under construction. The company says the building will allow the company to continue its growth and employ up to 300 employees in the future.
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Celebrating History
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Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
2000-2015 Transition and civic improvements 2000 • SHS.com, formerly Sun Healthcare Systems, moves into a new 40,000-squarefoot building adjacent to Seafarers’ Memorial Park. The software development firm’s more than 140 employees previously worked in three separate buildings in town. • By more than a 2-1 margin, voters approve the $6 million library bond measure. At the time, the library was in a building previously home to the city’s hospital. The total project was $7.2 million with the remaining funds to be raised privately. • A study says a $1.8 million Tommy Thompson Parkway rail-trail project is feasible. It would extend from Fourth Street to Weaverling Spit.
2001 • Equilon and the families of the six men who lost their lives in the 1998 explosion at the company’s Anacortes refinery reach an agreement just days before a wrongful death trial was set to begin. The company agrees to pay the families $45 million. It was the largest death settlement in the state’s history. • A fire ravages the inside of the historic Majestic Hotel. It started near the hotel’s second-floor library and spread rapidly upwards. • The historic Morrison Mill smokestack, the last relic of a bygone era when Anacortes’ waterfront bustled with lumber mills and canneries, is brought down by explosives. Earthquake damage rendered the debate about its future moot. The stack dated back to 1926. • Anacortes Cinemas opens. It features three auditoriums, a digital Dolby sound system, concession stand and rocker chairs with cup holders.
2002 • The Chamber of Commerce suggests an old-fashioned archway to bring traffic downtown. • MJB Properties asks the city to rezone undeveloped land between R and T avenues and 22nd and 28th streets from industrial to commercial to possibly site a Fred Meyer store there. • The first Anacortes Relay for Life is organized. It raised more than $108,000. • Yacht builder Westport Shipyard picks Port Angeles over Anacortes for the site of its new facility that will create up to 200 new jobs.
2003
ANACORTES MUSEUM
In 2001, Anacortes blew its stack. Explosives brought down the historic Morrison Mill smokestack, which had suffered earthquake damage. It had survived since 1926, a relic of a bygone era when Anacortes’ waterfront bustled with lumber mills and canneries. lic Library opens. The 27,000-square-foot library is more than double the size of its predecessor. • Northwest Educational Services District 189 signs as agreement to purchase software development company SHS’s 40,000-square-foot building overlooking Fidalgo Bay. The price was $4.79 million. SHS opted to sell after an economic downturn caused downsizing. • T Bailey and the Skagit Land Trust sign an agreement to better protect a heron colony from effects of the company’s planned new manufacturing facility on March Point.
2004 • Voters approve a $30.5 million bond as part of a $40 million construction and renovation project at Island Hospital. Plans include an addition to the emergency department, a wing of single-patient rooms and relocation of diagnostic services.
2005
• The city and port agree on a long-term • The new $6.9 million Anacortes Pub- plan and a development agreement for the
airport. The plan includes removing or topping tall trees and putting up a fence. • Construction begins to transform the upper portion of the Wilson Hotel into 25 studio and single bedroom apartments in a $5.5 million remodeling venture. • MJB Properties proposes to built The Waterfront at Fidalgo Bay, a resort that would include a six-story hotel with 130 rooms, a spa and a 400-person convention facility. The resort, planned to be built on 25 acres west of Q Avenue between 17th and 22nd streets, would also include a 25-foot wide public esplanade, two or more restaurants, shops, offices and 150250 condo units. • Gilbane Properties, a Rhode Island real estate developer, proposes to create a waterfront community with 103 singlefamily homes on 24 acres at Ship Harbor. • The Majestic Hotel is purchased by new owners for roughly $3 million. The historic hotel had sat empty since it was gutted by fire in February 2001.
ebrates its 100th anniversary. It started in 1906 as a social services center, church and horse boarding facility in the 400 block of O Avenue. • Whitney school starts the transition to an early childhood education center. • Anacortes High School graduates its 100th class. • A group representing Guemes Island residents files a lawsuit seeking to stop Skagit County from extending ferry hours.
2007
• The Anacortes School District’s $59.8 million bond request fails. It would have renovated Anacortes High School and Mount Erie Elementary School and built a new maintenance facility. • New owners take over at 1340 KLKIAM radio station. Bill Berry previously owned the station for 43 years. • The Fidalgo Pool & Fitness Center’s $8 million bond fails. The project would have renovated the existing pool, lobby, locker rooms, fitness center and park2006 ing area. It would also have an expanded • The Salvation Army in Anacortes cel- building for new features.
Celebrating History
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
2008
2010
• The Anacortes School District’s second try at a bond for $62.9 million fails. • All kindergartners in the Anacortes School District will attend full-day kindergarten in the fall. • The Our Town Our Park playground at Storvik Park opens. The playground was built with community-donated materials, money and labor during a five-day build. • BMW ORACLE Racing’s new 90-foot multihull yacht is launched after nine months of intense and secretive activity at its construction shed in Anacortes.
• A tragic explosion and fire at Tesoro Refinery results in the death of seven employees. The state Department of Labor & Industries cited Tesoro for 39 “willful” violations and five “serious” violations of state workplace safety and health regulations. It initially fined the company $2.38 million — the largest fine in the agency’s history. • The America’s Cup trophy visits Anacortes. The community celebrates the international sailing trophy and the racing crew and builders. The winning 90-foot trimaran was built in Anacortes. • The fire-damaged Tommy Thompson Parkway trestle reopens. The community raised about $327,000 to rebuild the trestle after a suspicious fire. • The Northwest Career & Technical Academy’s marine skills center opens here. High school and college students learn marine-related skills at the new $26 million facility.
2009
27
Anacortes American 125th Anniversary after a major environmental cleanup. • Dakota Creek Industries lands a roughly $74 million contract with the Department of Defense to build an ocean class Auxiliary General Oceanographic Research ship.
2012 • Island Hospital’s new Merle Cancer Care Center in the second floor of the new Medical Arts Pavilion opened. It is a $10.3 million facility. • Dakota Creek Industries was awarded a second nearly $71 million contract by the Department of Defense to build a second ocean class Auxiliary General Oceanography Research ship. • Site preparation work starts for the Tesoro refinery’s new unit train unloading facility at March Point. The $50 million project would allow Tesoro to receive additional crude oil from the Bakken Shale/Williston Basin area in North Dakota.
• The Commercial Avenue and Highway 20 roundabout opens. • The Save Guemes Mountain campaign raises the $2.2 million needed to purchase the 70 acres on the summit of the mountain. It was orchestrated by the San Juan Preservation Trust, Skagit Land Trust and the island community. • A suspicious fire destroys a portion of 2013 2011 the Tommy Thompson Parkway trestle. • Island Hospital commissioners vote • Families of six of the seven workers • The Anacortes Family Center opens. The family homeless shelter was the cul- who died in explosion and fire at the Tes- unanimously to not approve any proposal mination of a six-year effort. Funding to oro Refinery file a wrongful-death lawsuit for affiliation. The board will take time to further weigh their options. build the $2.4 million center came from a against the company. • Tethys Enterprises backs out of plans • Seafarers’ Memorial Park reopens variety of sources.
Congratulations to the Anacortes American for 125 Great Years!
for a 1 million-square-foot bottling plant along Highway 20. The company has worked on the project for several years and signed a water contract with the city in late 2010 before scrapping its plans. • The Similk Beach Golf Course is under new ownership after the MorganTurner family sells more than 200 acres of historic tribal lands to the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, including the course property. • Laurie Gere unseats five-term incumbent mayor Dean Maxwell.
2014 • The families of seven workers who died as a result of an explosion and fire at Tesoro refinery in 2010 settle a wrongful death lawsuit for about $39 million. • Voters approve the first Anacortes School District technology levy. The fouryear roughly $6.4 million tech levy funds wireless, professional development, additional staffing and portable technology. • The City Council OKs forming a Transportation Benefit District to raise funds to fix city roads. • The former Island Hospital Foundation director is arrested after allegedly embezzling more than $300,000 over four years.
A fourth Generation of Fine Quality
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Congratulations to the Anacortes American for 125 Quality Years!
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Celebrating History
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Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Anacortes American 125th Anniversary
Congratulations, Anacortes American!
C
We’re Celebrating, Too!
ongratulations to the Anacortes American, a community newspaper celebrating a distinguished 125-year history of service to this city. We share that sense of pride as we mark the 60th Anniversary of our refinery’s first production of fuel products in 1955. Sixty years ago, this refinery and its work force were welcomed “with open-handed friendliness and with forethought by the people of Anacortes.” So stated a company brochure produced for the community in the late Fifites. Vision was a common theme for the Anacortes American and its readers as the community struggled in the wake of changes in traditional industries including commercial fishing, processing and wood products. Soon after the 1953 announcement that our refinery would be built, the citizens of Anacortes developed and put into effect plans to accommodate growth in their community. They passed a $1.3 million school expansion program for two elementary schools, a gymnasium and additional high school classrooms. The City issued $1.6 million in bonds to quadruple the community’s water supply, and another $520,000 in bonds to extend municipal sewer services. And the growth came. Our refinery brought approximtely 600 new jobs, 350 of which were filled by local residents. In the first year, more than 400 new homes were built and some 50 new businesses moved in. Families who were transferred from other refinery operations were warmly welcomed, with invitations soon going out to join service clubs and other community organizations. Numerous employees became involved as elected officials and volunteers. Plant employees were also among those instrumental in establishing the United Good Neighbors organization, forerunner of the present United Way. Our commitment to this community has never wavered. We continue to make capital improvements that will make us competitive in a changing economy. We continue to take pride in our contributions to economy and culture. May the front page news continue to be bright for this unique Pacific Northwest community!
60 Years in Anacortes
While the Anacortes American reports the news, we have had the privilege of “making the news.” Photos from our proud “family album” (above) show construction scenes from 1953 leading up to 1955, when our refinery produced its first fuel products. Some of our employees are multigenerational refinery workers, still playing vital roles as Tesoro strives to remain competitive and contribute to the vitality of the community we call home.