City of Mount Vernon history

Ann Pamela Cunningham founded the Association in 1853.

Both the Upper and Lower Skagits were signatories to the Point Elliott Treaty of 1855, which did not serve them well.

The Association purchased Mount Vernon from George Washington’s heirs in 1858 for $200,000 with the goal of saving the estate and preserving its history.

Mount Vernon’s earliest recorded settlers, Jasper Gates and Joseph Dwelley, likely first stopped in the area in 1870 because the Skagit River was not navigable beyond this point due to enormous, ancient log jams.

From Backwater to County Seat With the river now open, the optimism of those who first settled near the logjam was vindicated, although pioneer Joseph Dwelley and his family had decided to move down to LaConner in 1873, six years before the river was cleared.

Realizing that they were on their own, a group of settlers formed a company in 1876 to take on the logjam themselves.

The first residential home in Mount Vernon was built by William Bice in 1877, and one Jonathon Schott opened the town's first hotel that same year.

After a yellow fever epidemic swept through Memphis, Tennessee in 1878, the newly created National Board of Health sent engineer and Civil War veteran George A. Waring Jr. to design and implement a better sewage drainage system for the city.

By the summer of 1879 the logjams had been cleared enough to permit navigation through and above Mount Vernon, but at substantial personal cost to those who had risked their lives to do it.

The first school was built in 1881.

In 1883-84, Whatcom County was divided and its southern portion became Skagit County.

In 1884 the town's first newspaper, the Skagit News, was started by publisher William C. Ewing.

The Skagit Sawmill and Manufacturing Company was incorporated in 1887 by, among others, Clothier & English, another of the many investments they, and particularly Edward English, would make in the logging industry.

Washington achieved statehood on November 11, 1889, and was designated a federal judicial district.

On June 27, 1890 the first general election was held and the City’s first Mayor Mr.

In August 1891 the tracks of the Seattle & Northern Railroad reached Mount Vernon, allowing the economy to be more easily uncoupled from the unpredictable river.

But cultural pursuits were also served, and the city's first opera house opened in 1892.

Municipal water supply developed in 1902;

A government publication from 1905 had the following to say:

In August 1912 Mount Vernon also welcomed the arrival of its first electric interurban train, owned by the powerful East Coast conglomerate Stone & Webster.

Flood-damaged railroad tracks, Skagit River, Mount Vernon, 1917

A picture of the Lincoln Theatre facade in 1926.

A new Post Office in 1935;

Skagit Valley Hospital opened its medical and surgical facilities in 1958.

In 1960 the City’s first Comprehensive Plan was created and adopted.

In 1965 Look Magazine named Mount Vernon an ” All American City” and the city maintains the standards that resulted in this acclaim.

Chechacos All: The Pioneering of Skagit - 1973 by a committee of the Skagit County Historical Society, Margaret Willis, editor

The city has steadily refined its efforts to hold back the waters, including the purchase in 2007 of a 1,500-foot portable flood wall that could be erected by fewer than a dozen people in about four hours and is hoped to be a vast improvement over labor-intensive sandbags.

Skagit River, Mount Vernon, 2009