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Congressman Rick Larsen visited La Conner and Fir Island on Friday, touring Hedlin Farms and the Fir Island Estuary Restoration Project. “I always tell people you can meet in my office for 15 minutes, or I can come take a field trip and meet you for an hour,” said Larsen. Larsen, D-Everett, who represents Washington’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes La Conner, will head to Washington D.C. next week, when Congress will reconvene after summer recess. At the Fir Island Estuary Resto...
Time is running out on an iconic La Conner sports arena. Contractors have begun demolition of the old school gym, built by volunteers nearly 70 years ago, and site of countless epic games and events from basketball buzzer beaters to community Halloween parties to the festive flower show that morphed into today’s Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. The landmark building is coming down as part of a new middle school construction project under way on the local campus. But because of lasting public s...
Local farmers can rest a little easier this summer, as the city of Anacortes will release a portion of its share of Skagit River water to save crops impacted by this year’s drought. The deal, made last week with the assistance of the state Department of Ecology, frees 4.8 million gallons of river water per day that is allocated to Anacortes to irrigate crops. The farms are in Irrigation and Drainage districts 15 and 22, an area encompassing Fir Island and the southern La Conner flats. The c...
The historic low water level in the Skagit River threatens to damage the valley’s farms this summer. With stream flows the lowest they’ve ever been in the 74 years records have been kept, the state authorized emergency water to be transferred from a utility to irrigate the most at-risk crops on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the Skagit County Board of Commissioners has scheduled a meeting Monday to hear from farmers concerned about their irrigation water supply. Monday’s meeting is 11:30 a.m. at the commissioners chambers in Mount Vernon. “We’r...
Over the past year, a horrible eyesore on La Conner’s southern waterfront has been quietly turning into something that will make the town proud. But it may prove too costly to save the property’s biggest structure, the 70-foot warehouse, from burrowing animals, substandard soil and the ravages of 117 years. Triton America took control of the old Moore Clark property last April and has already refurbished three of the five buildings on the three-acre site. Last week Triton CFO and Controller Ron...
Skagit is known for its sweet strawberries come June, but there has been nothing sweet about the season this year at the Sakuma Bros. Farm. The largest producer of berries in the valley finds itself at the center of a bitter dispute involving labor unrest, a boycott, and continued legal battles that have kept the company in the headlines. Journalist Anna Ferdinand explains the issues facing farms and their labor pools. Farm labor has changed over the past several years, with the once migrant...
The recent “La Conner Weekly News” article on the history of the Swinomish Channel has prompted a more complex story of the channel’s alterations over time. The Swinomish Slough, first called the Canim (canoe) Passage by newcomers to the area in the 1850s, was a narrow, winding waterway, so shallow that during the summertime, farmers waded their horses through it to obtain fresh drinking water from springs on the Swinomish Reservation. In 1893, the Army Corps of Engineers dredged the sloug...
In an historic ruling in Skagit County Superior Court, Judge Susan Cook found in favor of unionized farm laborers, ordering Sakuma Bros. Farm, Inc. in west Burlington to allow workers and their families back into housing provided by the family farm since after World War II. “It’s incredibly important that farm workers are actually accessing the justice system and getting justice, because we have never seen this before, this is the first time,” said Rosalinda Guillen, executive director of Commu...
What follows is from a memoir, “Tug Boat Life,” soon to be published by Gerald Bell about his 50 years working on tug boats. My first few months of work for Dunlap Towing were spent towing logs. One night we were departing Port Ludlow on the tug Vulcan with a tow that had several extra boom sticks tied along side. The sticks were fanned out from the tow, and we decided they needed to be tied in tight. The captain let me off on the tow with a pike pole and a flashlight and some tie line and con...
