Anacortes opened the decade as an active timber and fishing town, and the value of tourism was also appreciated, too. Back in those days, Anacortes was a weekend getaway for Seattle residents, who had rustic cabins (or more) dotting the Fidalgo Island countryside and in the San Juan Islands.

The local mills -- transforming logs for lumber and box "shooks," pulp for paper, shingles for homes -- processed felled trees from the upriver forests of the county and elsewhere. Those mills bellowed smoke and dust into downtown's air, and the pulp mill spewed its effluent "liquor" directly into local waters in an environmental action that would bring howls of protest and government fines today.

In what must be a typical hazard of the business, those mills seemed to burn with regularity in Anacortes. Those fires tended to be serious conflagrations considering that there was always plenty of fuel to feed them, and they usually put 100 men out of work at a time when they occurred. In most cases, owners vowed to rebuild quickly and the men usually got their jobs back.

In this decade, Anacortes was at the heart of the Puget Sound fish packing industry, with numerous canneries dotting the shoreline and hundreds of boats to feed them. Salmon was the mainstay, although boats such as the schooner Wawona and others fed them cod from Alaska, as well.

For many, the decade started off  well, and 1930 turned out to be a critical year for Anacortes, with decisions being made then that we live with still today. The notion of a Cap Sante Waterway became reality in January of 1930. The city committed to build a waterline from the Skagit River to Anacortes in March 1930, and we depend on that municipal utility today. A new Anacortes Hospital (now the public library) opened in June, and Gus Hensler donated 120 acres to the city for what is now the Mount Erie portion of the Anacortes Community Forest Lands.

But by the end of 1930 the Depression had reached Anacortes. Getting food on the table and finding work kept everybody busy. Mills were closing, wages were being cut, fishermen handed out free fish to hungry families, the chamber of commerce registered the unemployed for the few local jobs that existed, and nearly every service club in town had regular relief efforts that lasted until the latter years of the decade.

The newspaper headline said it all: "Outsiders warned, keep out of city," and that meant the city didn't need any more mouths to feed. To its credit, Anacortes did a very respectable job taking care of its own during the Depression years, but as far as jobs went, it was a closed city.

Of course, the federal government's relief options were called upon here, and that has left its own particular legacy in Anacortes and on Fidalgo Island. First and foremost, the Deception Pass bridge that opened in 1935 stands today as a monument to federal relief, and the Civilian Conservation Corps camp at Bowman's Bay, once housing up to 900 men, makes for a grand park now.

One industry that wasn't talked much about on the pages of the American in those days was bootlegging, and it's a fair guess that more than a few locals found new employment as Prohibition-fueled suppliers of Canadian whiskey. In 1933, Anacortes and the rest of Skagit County had had enough of being "dry," voting to repeal the 18th Amendment along with the rest of the country.

By the late 1930's life was getting back to normal in Anacortes. And although newspaper files from some years are missing, it's clear that the local economy was on the upswing. In 1939, Anacortes Veneer Inc. launched its first effort at employing stockholder-workers, a strategy that represented important work for many of Anacortes' current senior citizens.

Anacortes City Council says it's ready to ban slot machines from the city as soon as the county prosecutor does the same in other cities in Skagit County.

The Black Ball Line's ferry Kalakala visits Anacortes and Guemes Island.

1936

Anacortes Chamber of Commerce is writing letters to keep the Deception Pass Civilian Conservation Corps camp open. More than 900 workers have been told to get ready to move out of the camp.

The federal government OK's $14,800 for the purchase of land at Sixth Street and Commercial Avenue for a new federal building and post office.

Anacortes holds its first Marineers Pageant.

The landslide election of Franklin D. Roosevelt for President carries Skagit County and Washington state Democrats to victory. The Anacortes American gloats over the victory "as the only Democratic newspaper in the county."

All Works Progress Administration projects in Anacortes are halted after city balks at its share of cost. Oakes Avenue improvement project is 90 percent complete; 100 men are idle, but a couple of weeks later the city OKs $1,000 to continue the work on Oakes.

1938

Anacortes Lumber Co. sawmill burns to the ground with the loss of 150 jobs.

1939

City OK's a stoplight at intersection of 20th Street and Commercial Avenue, causing some controversy. Anacortes Veneer Inc. reports it has signed 200 of the 240 stockholders needed for completion of its new organization, by December the cooperative venture has started operations and made its first shipment of 60,000 feet of veneer wood.