Yellow Pages
Oct. 7, 1909
Last Tuesday, the Pacific Telephone Company laid its 5,500 foot cable across Guemes channel thus placing all the inhabitants of Guemes Island into communication with Anacortes and all the cities of the Pacific Northwest.
The Fidalgo Island terminal of the cable is at the foot of commercial and the Guemes Island terminal at the East Point on Mrs. Mangan’s property. The Guemes Island exchange will be maintained in the Island Grocery store.
Oct. 2, 1919
Wednesday evening next in the Nelson school gymnasium will be held the first session of the Ladies Gymnasium Club of Anacortes, and thereafter regular sessions will be held every Wednesday. The promoters are hoping to see all prospective members at the gymnasium, dressed in rubber-soled tennis shoes or leather track shoes, white middies and dark bloomers, ready for a good, live initiation. The membership fee for the term of three months is one dollar.
Oct. 3, 1929
Friends of Johnny Jordan, former Anacortes high school student and graduate, are anxiously waiting for news that he is not implicated in the $50,000 jewel robbery in Seattle, which took place last week in the Ligget building, and for whom the police are scouring the country, in an effort to locate the jewels or secure information as to their disposition. The search for the missing man is being carried on from the Mexican border to the Canadian border, and news of the robbery and Jordan’s implied connection has been broadcasted all over the country. His friends feel that his failure to appear and deny the charge is an admission of guilt, but are loath to believe it.
Oct. 5, 1939
The Sebastian Stuart Canning company of Anacortes, pioneering tuna canning plant on the Puget Sound and in the state of Washington will start their third season of canning tuna following the close of the salmon canning season on November 20 it was revealed by I.P. Raeder, superintendent of the Anacortes cannery this week. Eighty persons are expected to be employed at the Anacortes plant, during the two to three months that the season will run.
Oct. 6, 1949
Anacortes salmon canning plants, fishermen and purse seine boats stopped all operations at 4 p.m. on Wednesday as the result of a strike vote taken on Monday by Puget Sound Commercial Salmon fishermen. More than 200 purse seine boats and more than 1,000 fishermen alone are affected with the additional cannery help that is also thrown out of work in the sound area. In addition shipments of fresh fish into the fresh fish markets of western Washington will be stopped. Robert Cumming, business agent of the Fishermen’s Union stated to Seattle newspapers that the strike was the result of prices offered for dog salmon and silver salmon. Cumming stated that the union was offered 8 cents a pound for dog salmon and 15 cents a pound for silver salmon, 10 cents less than the year before.
Oct. 1, 1959
It took about 60 years, but Guemes Island finally has another post office. When Anacortes’ postmaster Gus Dalstead administered the oath of office to Mrs. Wade Gilkey today, the island’s 100 families could buy everything from a penny postcard (well, a three-cent postcard) to a domestic money order at their only store.
Oct. 2, 1969
With figures released this week by Island Hospital, Anacortes who will vote on the $2,995,000 44-bed expansion for Island Hospital Nov. 4 can now see how passage of the bond will affect them. The estimated yearly tax for a 25 year period will be seven mills. For example, taking a $10,000 home assessed at 25 percent of actual value, the new addition will cost $17.50 per year.
— From the archives of the Anacortes American
