![]() Vernon "Big Bend" jam.Ĭonner renamed the Swinomish Post Office and his new town site by combining Louisa’s initials with their surname to make a high-toned, French-sounding "LaConner." La Conner had early success because it was below the jam and a major part of its downfall was the clearing of the Mt. Settlers were forced to locate homesteads in the dense timber along the river below the jam, and few did until the logjam was cleared in the late 1870s. There was an enormous natural logjam near the mouth of the Skagit River, which prohibited upstream access and travel. Nova Scotian Michael Sullivan and Sam Calhoun from New Brunswick and their large families had begun the monumental task of building dikes to claim rich new farmland from the marshy tangle of creeks and sloughs and protect it from high tides, and annual flooding. Non-Indians had been settling in the Skagit delta area since the mid-1860s. ![]() His wife, the former Louisa Ann Siegfried, 27, became the only white woman in the area. Conner came from Olympia and bought the land upon which the town subsequently grew. The young Alonzo abandoned his failing effort after 14 months, but in 1869, John S. Low's family was among the original party that landed on Alki point (when Alonzo was 2) went on to found Seattle they resettled later in Snohomish where they were substantial pioneers. In 1867, on the banks of the Swinomish slough opposite the village of the Swinomish tribe, Alonzo Low built a small trading post on the site of what was to become La Conner. ![]() Resident novelist Tom Robbins says of the town they created: "That this was an intersection of art and fishing and farming is what’s interesting and unusual and singular to this community” (Hood). These bohemians mixed with rough and tumble fishermen, tow boatmen, and farm hands. In 1937, Morris Graves (1910-2001), who was to become a painter of international renown, came to town and brought his artist friends. The inherent beauty of the environs, the atmospherics, and the cheap rent of the moldering town attracted artists and eccentrics. With its sweeping waterfront and business district overseen by "The Hill," the wooded, residential midtown bluff, it's a scenic, historic time capsule. Its brief county seat status was lost to Mount Vernon in 1883 and a series of economic misfortunes caused the town to slowly fade and be left in the backwaters for decades. Bounded by farmland, the Swinomish Channel and the Swinomish Indian Reservation, it was an up-to-date town and lively terminus for river steamers bringing timber and lumber down from the upper Skagit, and port for farm commodities grown in the surrounding delta flatlands. Located in western Skagit County, La Conner was once county seat and most populous town in the Skagit Valley.
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