MARBLEMOUNT — Just after noon Sunday, the Battle of the Northern Pass and the Attack on Marblemount started with a blast of Southern sniper fire.

Two Johnny Rebs snuck into town from the west, trying to catch the occupying Union Army unawares.

The crack of the snipers’ rifles and a few shouted insults quickly alerted the Yankees that the rebels were back, trying to retake this small community in Eastern Skagit County.

“Yellow-bellied Yanks, come here!” one sniper shouted from her position alongside Highway 20.

The union soldiers, standing in formation in the highway’s lefthand-turn lane returned fire. The battle for Marblemount was on.

It’s not the first time rifle-toting Civil War re-enactors have invaded Marblemount.

About 10 or 15 years ago, Marshall Cooper, owner of the Buffalo Run Inn and Restaurant, got the idea to invite the Bellingham-based 15th Alabama Infantry to town. The first year, about a dozen confederate soldiers showed up.

It’s become an annual event, designed to educate people about a turbulent and bloody time in the nation’s history. There were 1 million casualties in the Civil War, including 620,000 soldiers who died in battle, of their wounds or were killed by disease, according to the U.S. Civil War Center. However, no Civil War battles were fought in Washington state.

With the Cascade Mountains looming overhead, the battle along the highway is more realistic than staging a re-enactment in Burlington’s or Mount Vernon’s downtown, Cooper said.

“The word kept getting out, every year more and more people kept showing up, people from all over the Northwest as far north as Canada,” Cooper said.

This year, roughly 35 re-enactors, all members of the Washington Civil War Association, descended. Re-enactors who are farmers remained home because they feared forecasted freezing temperatures would hurt their crops, Cooper said.

Cooper said that he hopes the event will remind Skagitonians and tourists there’s fun to be had in Marblemount.

“We’re kind of the last page of the (Skagit) County’s book, the backside of the last page,” Cooper said.

Besides the battle, hoop-skirt wearing women, such as Anna Flores, demonstrated weaving, candlemaking and other civilian skills.

Flores, who goes by her character name Victoria Alsbury, and her husband, Ruben Flores, who goes by Cpl. Joseph Florentino of Cobbs Battery, attend three or four events each summer.

“We enjoy it,” said Anna Flores of Lynnwood. “It’s quite an escape from reality.”

Flores said she and her husband enjoy the historic aspect and getting the details of their camp and costume correct.

The couple set up an authentic camp complete with a tin-lined wooden chest to keep foodstuffs cool, and a barrel of water that they use a metal ladle, called a dipper, to draw water from. The Flores cook on a steel wood-burning stove because the more authentic cast-iron is to heavy to lug around, she said.

On Sunday, Anna Flores wore widow weeds consisting of a scarlet blouse and a black skirt. Under her skirt, she wore several layers including a set of hoops and a corset. She covered her short, frosted hair with a long wig parted in the middle and contained her “hair” back with a crocheted net. 

The couple invents new civil war personas each year, but everything military must be cleared through their re-enacting group, which runs itself based on military hierarchy. This year, her character is the sister-in-law of her husband’s character.

An interest in history attracts many re-enactors, said Mike Aiken, an Acme resident who belongs to the 15th Alabama Infantry. A friend of Aiken’s convinced him to participate in an event several years ago and he was bit by the re-enacting bug.

“I went out and tried it, and I thought: It’s actually fun,” said Aiken , who owns a business in Mount Vernon.

Al Rousseau, 80, of Seattle said that he got hooked visiting his brother-in-law in Alabama and seeing a historic battleground. Rousseau said that he enjoys “getting out and acting like a kid again.”

Some of the battles, especially the larger ones, are carefully choreographed with no surprises. But what’s a war without getting the drop on the enemy?

Aiken said he remembers during one battle, the civilian ladies wielding pots, pans and rolling pins chased marauding soldiers from their “town.”

“We were the Union and we were invading their town,” Aiken said.

His wife, Cherri Aiken, one of the pots and pans brigade, grinned.

“We were defending our town,” she said.

Before the Union and Rebel armies descended Sunday on the tiny eastern Skagit County town, Cooper helped Mike Aiken and his friend Al Rousseau prepare for battle with a good-natured ribbing.

“Turncoats,” Cooper teased.

Normally, Aiken and Rousseau proudly wear the 15th Alabama Infantry’s gray wool uniforms. But on Sunday the two Southerners had to don Union blue.

Apparently too many Yankees had slunk off in the night — er, left early Sunday to return to real-world commitments. It’s common to carry the other side’s uniform, so that re-enactors such as Aiken and Rousseau can even the odds if there are too many Southerners or Northerners.

“We’re all cross-dressers,” Aiken wisecracked.

But even with better odds and a cannon hidden on the western end of town, the North didn’t prevail — at least not in Sunday’s battle.

The cannons’ boom rang the ears of the roughly 40 people watching from the parking lots of the Buffalo Run Inn and Restaurant and the Shell gas station. One of the Northern men screamed and dropped but kept rolling until he “died” on the road shoulder, out of the way of traffic.

With the time-consuming process of reloading their rifles after shots of black powder, the soldiers had plenty of time to shout insults.

“Couldn’t hit a barn!”

“Hey Pops! I got one for you!”

“Damn Yankees!”

The Rebels, who brought their own cannon, also captured the Northern cannon, turning both of the big guns onto the Union soldiers.

Finally, with most of the Northern soldiers lying “dead” in the street, the Union captain raised his sword in surrender.

Unlike in history, both the Union and Confederate armies of re-enactors will rise again.

• Marta Murvosh can be reached at 360-416-2149 or .