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About Bellingham, Washington

Bellingham, Washington is the county seat of Whatcom County in the U.S. state of Washington. It is the largest city in Whatcom County and tenth largest in Washington. It is situated on Bellingham Bay, which is protected by Lummi Island, Portage Island, and the Lummi Peninsula, and opens onto the Strait of Georgia. It lies west of Mount Baker and Lake Whatcom (from which it gets its drinking water) and north of the Chuckanut Mountains and Skagit Valley. Whatcom Creek runs through the center of the city.

The Census Bureau estimate placed Bellingham's 2003 population at 71,289,^[3] and a recent calculation pushes it to 74,770.^[4] Bellingham has recently experienced an increase in real estate prices. As of Spring 2007, real estate prices seem to be leveling out as the market decreases.

The boundaries of the city encompass the former towns of Fairhaven (now home to the southern ferry terminus of the Alaska Marine Highway System), New Whatcom, and others.

[Bellingham] History

Whatcom Creek, South Downtown Bellingham, and Sehome Hill as seen from Maritime Heritage Park. The mouth of Whatcom Creek is obscured to the lower right.

The name of Bellingham is derived from the bay on which the city is situated. George Vancouver, who visited the area in June 1792, named the bay for Sir William Bellingham, the controller of the storekeeper's account of the Royal Navy.^[5]

The first white settlers reached the area in 1854. Local history and legend crBellingham one "Blanket" Bill Jarman as the first white man to reside in the area^{[citation needed]}. The original settlement was named Whatcom, located where Whatcom Creek empties into the bay. A stockade, "Fort Bellingham", was built on Peabody Hill, and commanded by Captain George E. Pickett, later to become famous as a Confederate General in the American Civil War. Pickett's house remains to this day as the oldest house in the city.^[6]

In 1858, the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush caused thousands of miners, storekeepers, and scalawags to head north from California. Whatcom grew overnight from a small northwest mill town to a bustling seaport, the basetown for the Whatcom Trail, which led to the Fraser Canyon goldfields, used in open defiance of colonial Governor James Douglas's edict that all entry to the gold colony be made via Victoria, British Columbia. The first brick building in Washington was built at this time, the T. G. Richards and Company Store. The first newspaper in Whatcom County, the Northern Light, was published by William Bausman during the boom. Just as soon as it started, the boom went bust with the miners being forced to stop at Victoria, B.C. for a permit before heading to the mining fields. Whatcom's population dropped almost as quickly as it had grown, and the sleepy little town on the bay returned.

Coal mining was commonplace near town, with the Blue Canyon mine at Lake Whatcom being the site of Washington's worst industrial accident, which occurred April 8, 1895. In time, the mines were closed down and sealed off.

Bellingham was officially incorporated on November 4, 1903. It was the result of the consolidation of four towns initially situated around Bellingham Bay: Whatcom, Sehome, Bellingham, and Fairhaven. A fictionalized account of the history of Bellingham in this era is "The Living" by Annie Dillard.