The Rebirth of Anacortes

After arriving on Fidalgo Island in 1876, promoter Amos Bowman set out to turn Anacortes into "The New York of the West". When he platted the city of his dreams, he laid out a community the size of Boston. Anacortes was an ideal destination for the sailing ships that rode the prevailing westerlies the length of the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the deep, protected waters of the Guemes Channel. Amos visualized a world-class port where sail met rail, on land he just happened to own. He offered half his land to any person or business that would follow his dream and in 1888, the Oregon Improvement Company accepted his proposal and announced plans to build a railroad. By 1890, the public had bought the Bowman dream. In January of that year, Anacortes had 30 to 40 inhabitants. By March, there were 3,000 people in residence, based on speculation heartily endorsed by Amos Bowman that Anacortes was about to become the terminus for the trans-continental railroad. The train that appeared in August came north from Seattle, not west from New York. It sparked a brief celebration among Anacortesans, but it wasn't the trans-continental union of Bowman's imagination. By the end of the year, when the news broke that the trans-continental railroad was bound for Tacoma rather than Bowman's wharf, the bottom fell out of the real estate market. Virtually everybody who had the means to leave Anacortes did so. The crash devastated Bowman but recovery was slow but sure. Watch the rebirth of the historic community in this excerpt from John Sabella's documentary, Anacortes, The Perfect Port: http://www.johnsabella.com/detail.las...