This series highlights locations in Skagit County. These communities were formed in the early 1870's remaining up until the 1920's. Many of the names still appear on maps. A few have buildings remaining in use today. These communities and many others can be found on https:/www.skagitcounty.net/Maps/iMap/?mapjs=hist
“Fidalgo City! It’s like the Promised Land. The water wheel is over 40 feet high! Keeps the mill humming, turning out lumber. I’ll have building contracts for the rest of my life,” said pioneer resident Dwight Rathbone sometime in the 1880s.
The settlement at the south end of Fidalgo Island just inside Deception Pass was first known simply as “Deception,” and later as “Dewey.” There was a store and a mill, which was powered by the water flowing from Lake Campbell down to the bay.
A short time later it became known as Fidalgo City, the word “City” to distinguish it from another settlement named Fidalgo on March’s Point.
From the book “Skagit School Ma’am: A Pioneer teacher in the San Juans,” Callie Rathbone wrote, “We could see the two docks and the buildings of Fidalgo City where it nestled just a few miles inside Deception Pass. I could imagine the city as Uncle Julius and Will planned it would grow to be: spires and 10-storey skyscrapers, and a tangle of traffic of tandems, surreys, and delivery wagons.”
She wasn’t alone in her enthusiasm. Her aunt wrote, “Three hundred and forty-one blocks are already surveyed. Some of the better lots are going for as high as $3,000 dollars, sight unseen.
“These eastern folks are making great plans to migrate westward. The mill here is going full blast. There are two long docks always bustling, loading or unloading passengers and freight from the six steamboats that ply the waters between Bellingham and Seattle.”
At the time she wrote, there were also three store buildings, two saloons and a hotel with 40 rooms, in addition to a telegraph station and a little white church on the hill above the town.
In 1891, Fidalgo City was connected with Anacortes by an electric street car known as the Anacortes-Fidalgo City Electric Railway. Workers pushed the 13-mile rail line through the wilderness — which is now R Avenue — and set up stations on today’s Commercial Avenue, at Summit Park and Fidalgo City.
Sad to say, about a mile down the track the power proved insufficient and the car couldn’t climb the steep grade.
The passengers got out to push, but the trolley wouldn’t budge, and that was the end of the railway’s career, except for a few trips where the trolley was hitched to a horse.
After this event, the hard times that followed in 1893 left the once-thriving town with vacant buildings and undeveloped building lots. The bank and hotel were both converted to agricultural use, housing white Leghorn chickens.
Following the Spanish-American war, the name was changed a third time — it became known as Dewey, in honor of the admiral of the same name. The ferry from Dewey to Cornet Bay was begun by Fred Finsen in 1913 and continued until the opening of the Deception Pass Bridge in 1935 made it obsolete.
Today, all that remains of what some called “The San Francisco of the West” is a peaceful neighborhood of private homes to mark the once-busy port and growing city.
All information from: goskagit.com - Written by By Mari Densmore Skagit County History Museum Jul 17, 2016
Also thanks to LibLabLady for assistance in finding information for the posting.
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