Tales of the Magic Skagit

Day 2 at the Fair History Booth yielded some delightful interviews for Don Wick and me...starting with a return visit from Finn, one of the very first interviews we did at last year's fair. We also spoke with Connie, who shared her memories of competing in the annual Fair Parade (she and her sister took home the first place trophy three years in a row!). We spoke with Dwight and Tom about bein...

On Day 1 of the 2023 Skagit County Fair, Don Wick and I talk to some young fair goers about the things that bring them joy. For "cousins" Charlotte and Cassidy, it's fair food (especially deep fried Oreos); for Liberty Brooks, it's raising and showing Holland Lop bunnies; for Maddy Durkin, it's being the Sedro-Woolley Rodeo Queen; and for mother and daughter Genevieve and Emm...

For years, the driving force behind the organization of the annual Skagit County Fair has been Fair Manager Aric Gaither. In the time that I've worked with Aric, I've never stopped marveling at his energy and dedication to making the fair a cherished venue for bringing together friends and neighbors from all over the Magic Skagit. What few people appreciate about Aric's accomplishments...

For one home on Mount Vernon's Cleveland Street, you might say that the Skagit County Fair has been a "moving" experience. In this Tales of the Magic Skagit podcast episode, we'll hear from two of the four owners of the home that sits next to the Sherman Anderson Ballpark, but was for decades situated within the fairgrounds. So what's it like having the Skagit County Fair as...

Hiatus = a pause or gap in a sequence, series, or process Our nation is losing OVER 40 veterans a day to suicide and over 700 first responders to suicide. Suicide is now the second-leading cause of death for post-9/11 veterans with the highest percentage between 55 and 74 years old. Hiatus Ranch of Idaho offers hiatus retreats for combat military veterans, local first responders, and active milita...

July 15 & 16, 2023 will mark the 19th annual Skagit Valley studio tour known as Northwest Art Beat. Presented by Skagit Artists (www.skagitartists.com), a non-profit organization that promotes the visual arts by developing economic and networking opportunities in Skagit County, the event that takes place on the third weekend of July. This year, NW Art Beat (www.nwartbeat.com) is featuring 15 S...

Maggie Telford is the Collections Intern at the Skagit County Historical Museum in La Conner, WA. Her work at the museum has been funded by a Diversity in Local History Grant, and the task she has taken on is nothing less than the inventorying and reinterpretation of the museum's entire collection of Native American artifacts in order to re-tell its story of the First Peoples of the Skagit Val...

We know it today as the Penn Cove Water Festival, an annual event that brings canoe racers to Coupeville on beautiful Whidbey Island to celebrate an important cultural intersection between tribal and non-tribal communities: life on the waters of the Puget Sound and Salish Sea. The event began in 1930 as a bit of local hucksterism that was billed as the "Indian Water Carnival." In this Be...

Last year I wrote a story that proved quite popular with our Tales of the Magic Skagit audience. It was the story of a failed socialist utopia that was created just southeast of Blanchard, WA (the birthplace of Edward R. Murrow) at the end of the 19th century. It was called Equality Colony, and it was the inspiration of an association called the Brotherhood for Cooperative Commonwealth (BCC), whic...

In July 1993, a collection of stories, essays, and poems was published about the life of Vi Hilbert. Edited by the Seattle-based author Janet Yoder, the collection was a celebration of Vi's 75th birthday. As Janet describes it in her foreword, "The stories weave together like cedar bark to create a picture of this marvelous woman" who was "a language teacher, a storyteller, a tr...

Not long after my immigration to the Magic Skagit, I paid my first visit to the Skagit County Historical Society Museum in La Conner. It was there that I first became aware that there were a number of communities, besides those of the First People of this place, that had once existed whose place names have been forgotten over time. While the museum maintains an exhibit that tells the stories of so...

A March 3, 2023 article in the Skagit Valley Herald described Burlington's Skagit First Step Center as Skagit County's "only low barrier homeless shelter." Burlington mayor Steve Sexton cites its success since it opened in summer 2021 in providing "a small piece of a very complex puzzle. Sadly, the Herald 's headline read, "Short On Funding." In this interview with Mayor Sexton, we talk about the...

Tony Cladoosby, a Swinomish elder, prayed for a cedar canoe in the midst of his own canoe journey. He related the story of his vision for a family canoe that he would name "My Cousin," and of a second canoe to be named "My Last Cousin," in an earlier podcast episode, "Canoe Journey -- Part 3." With the generous assistance of the Island County Historical Society Museum, Tony has been studying a nea...

A few months back, Tales of the Magic Skagit introduced you to Bruce (Honker) McCormick and his "Monster Book of Pioneers": a family heirloom entitled, "An Illustrated History of Skagit and Snohomish Counties." During our initial interview about the book, which was published in 1906 and subsequently restored, we read the biography of Bruce's grandfather, David McCormick, one of the earliest immigr...

In Part 1 of "A Brief History of Whidbey Island," Rick Castellano, the executive director of the Island County Historical Society Museum in Coupeville, told us about his own history, and the journey that led him to his current vocation. In this concluding part of our series, we’ll take a deeper dive into the history of Coupeville, starting with Rick’s reference to a 2009 study by the National Park...

One of my goals for our Tales of the Magic Skagit podcast series is to do more interviews with people who make a career out of knowing the history of this marvelous place. I’m thinking in particular about museum directors and curators. One of the folks on my list has been Rick Castellano, the executive director of the Island County Historical Society Museum in Coupeville, Washington — situated on...

It’s 1913 -- year three of the Mount Baker Marathon. There’s a new cast of characters involved in organizing the race, and the financial stakes are more fraught than ever, as are the weather conditions on the mountain summit as race time arrives. Once again, greed, egotism, and promotional aspirations collide with considerations of runners’ safety, with near lethal results. Todd Warger and Brian Y...

Downtown Mount Vernon's newest restaurant venue, Cà Phê Sông, had its ribbon cutting on January 21. Owners Jenny and Ed take a break from their kitchen prep to share their story of ethnic cuisine, entrepreneurial pluck, and immigrant ambition -- and in the process we also learn about the components of a classic Bahn Mi sandwich and the mysteries of boba tea. This episode could make you hungry, but...

In Part 1 of The Mountain Runners, the historian/film maker team of Todd Warger and Brian Young revealed the origins of America's first mountain adventure race in 1911 -- a harrowing route from Bellingham, Washington to the summit of Mount Baker and back via automobile, train, foot -- and sometimes by horse. We listened to a detailed account of the inaugural event, which included a train derailmen...

Fourteen runners will start. Few will finish. This is the incredible true story of America's first mountain adventure race -- one that Hollywood would have been hard pressed to script. Fortunately, this didn't prevent a local historian and a Mount Vernon film maker from producing a documentary about an unbelievable race from Bellingham, WA to the top of Mount Baker and back that took place in 1911...

In this final installment of our three-part podcast episdoe, “Where the Language Lives,” we start off with a story from Janet Yoder’s book that exemplfies Vi Hilbert's vision for the Lushootseed language, and her ability to speak that vision into existence. It’s the story of the Healing Hearts Symphony. We’ll also hear about Robby Rudine’s passion for Lushoostseed, and we’ll listen to him recite o...

In part one of this episode, we learned the story of Janet Yoder and her husband's 30-year relationship with Vi Hilbert (TAHK-SH-BLU), and about the book that celebrates their friendship: Where the Language Lives: Vi Hilbert and the Gift of Lushootseed . We also learned about Vi's life and work from her daughter, Lois Dodson. In part two of the podcast, we'll learn more about Lois' life and her ev...

One of the great pleasures I've experienced in living in the Magic Skagit for the past decade has been learning about the First People of this place I now call home. In doing so, I quickly became aware of the name Vi Hilbert, thanks to my wife's purchase of a Lushootseed dictionary that Vi had played a role in creating. With the recent publication of the book, "Where the Language Lives: Vi Hilbert...

This is the concluding segment in our two-part series on the cultural significance of canoes among the Coast Salish people -- past, present, and future. In episode one, Eric Day, Michelle Calvin, and Tony Cladoosby discussed the origins of the Canoe Journey, and Eric and Michelle spoke at length about how it changed their lives. In this episode, Tony shares his personal history as well, and talks...

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Beaver Tales, a podcast series by and about the first peoples of the Skagit Valley. The series is co-hosted by Michael Boss, the producer of Meyer Sign's "Tales of the Magic Skagit," along with Michelle Calvin and Tony Cladoosby, the co-owners of Beaver Tales Coffee in historic La Conner, WA.  Our first episode considers the significance of the canoe among...