Anacortes

Sister cities

• Vela Luka
• Nikaho
• Sidney
• Lomonosov

History

Anacortes is within the historical territory of the Samish people. Anacortes was officially incorporated on May 19, 1891. In 1877, railroad surveyor and town founder Amos Bowman moved his family to the northern tip of Fidalgo Island. Bowman began promoting the area as an obvious terminus for the Northern Pacific Railway as it was built through the north Cascades to the Pacific. Bowman established the town's first newspaper, The Northwest Enterprise, to promote his vision of the New York of the West. Seattle and Northern Company began building a rail line from the town in 1888. Real estate and development boomed from 1888 to 1890 as a result of the railroad rumors, and the Oregon Improvement Company posted $15 million in bonds to develop the town. In 1891, the real estate bubble burst. Speculators lost money and the Oregon Improvement Company could no longer afford to complete tracks over the Cascades. The town failed to become the railroad terminus Bowman had envisioned. A second newspaper, the Anacortes American was established in 1890, and digitized copies of its publication from inception through December 2000 are searchable at the Washington State Library's archives. In 1960, the paper's masthead showed it was an affiliate member of the National Editorial Association. After the 1891 bust, the town became prominent for its fishing tradition, thriving canning industry, and timber mills.

Geography

Anacortes is on Fidalgo Island. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and is water. The area around the city includes cliffs and bluffs with bedrock deposits that date to 160 million years before present. The landforms were shaped by a major glaciation event 15,000 years before present. According to the Köppen climate classification system, Anacortes has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Csb) with cool, rainy winters and warm, dry summers.