Skagit River Journal of History & Folklore Subscribers Edition Stories & Photos The most in-depth, comprehensive site about the Skagit. Covers from British Columbia to Puget sound. Counties covered: Skagit, Whatcom, Island, San Juan. An evolving history dedicated to the principle of committing random acts of historical kindness

Noel V. Bourasaw, editor 810 Central Ave., Sedro-Woolley, Washington, 98284 Home of the Tarheel Stomp Mortimer Cook slept here & named the town Bug

One of our famous Skagit valley sunsets. Photo by Todd Zersen

      Water defines Skagit county, by the many lakes, hundreds of streams flowing down from the hills, the river itself and Puget sound's salt water. The river is very young, the channel being mainly formed at the end of the last ice age as a number of glaciers advanced westwards and finally melted after pushing thousands of tons of boulders and silt before them. Skagit county is approximately 24 miles north to south by 78 miles east to west. It is bounded on the west by Puget sound, on the east by the Cascade Mountain range, on the north by Whatcom county — from which it split in November 1883, and on the south by Snohomish county. The total area is 1,944 square miles with 110 square miles covered by salt water. The land mainly lies on townships 32-36, ranges 1-13 of Willamette Meridian and the county is bisected by latitude 48 degrees, 30 minutes north.
      Twenty islands comprise the western ten miles of the county. Those that are inhabited are Fidalgo island — formed at the extreme western end of the county by the north-south Swinomish slough, and nearby Sinclair and Guemes islands. The next fifteen miles to the east include the agricultural areas of the river delta, the retail trade centers of Burlington and Mount Vernon along the I-5 freeway and the old Pacific Coast Highway 99, and the county seat in Mount Vernon. The delta area is about 15 to 20 feet above sea level and would be inundated were it nor for the extensive dike system adjacent to the river, which was originated by settlers in the 1860s through 1880s. The extremely rich productive soil was formed by silt of the river over thousands of years and is often compared to the soil Nile river delta in Egypt. In the 20th century the area west of Mount Vernon to LaConner began to look like the Netherlands as much acreage was devoted to tulips, which are celebrated by annual festival in April. Sedro-Woolley is at the eastern edge of this area and marks the beginning of a wide agricultural belt, which was once covered by dense forests of fir, cedar and hemlock and then was cleared by loggers starting in the 1870s.
      East of Sedro-Woolley the land elevation begins rising gradually to the foothills of the Cascades. This area was the second section of the county to be settled — after the delta. It was initially blocked from river navigation by two large log jams near the present towns of Mount Vernon and Avon, which were cleared beginning in the mid- to late-1870s. Many early settlers preferred this stretch of the river but their plans were disrupted because the canyons restrict agriculture to a very narrow belt a few miles north and south of the river and because of disastrous floods that occurred nearly every year in the mid-1880s through the 1890s. The dams of the upper Skagit above the present town of Newhalem were originally intended as much for flood control as for production of hydroelectric power for the city of Seattle.
      The name Skagit derives from the Indian tribes of the area. We explore the meaning of the word in some depth at this Journal website, but for now, we can tell you that it has many meanings, all of which blend together. The Indian language developed a word so complex in meaning that it is more of a state of mind and product of experience with the river than one that can be defined easily in a linear sense. Settlers who developed a firm sense of place and took the time to understand the Indian ways often interpreted their version of the word as meaning "the ultimate." Over the years, the embodiment of the word was the mountain cat or wildcat, which roamed over the hills and the forests unabated for thousands of the years until civilization and settlers encroached onto its territory.
      If you want to know more about the overall big picture of the land and river, we suggest that you move on to the section about the conference convened by Western Washington University professor Roland L. DeLorme in 1977 — Of Man, time and a river: the Skagit river, how should it be used?.

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