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The Scott Paper Mill, once of the largest employers in the city, closed on this date in 1978. For more than 50 years, the pulp mill at the foot of 17th Street played a major role in the economy, community and environment (i.e. aroma) of Anacortes. Lumber mills operated on this shore of Fidalgo Bay as early as the 1890s, but the first pulp mill was opened by Fidalgo Pulp Manufacturing Co. in 1925. Scott Paper Co., which bought the mill in 1940, operated it as the Anacortes Pulp Company, and later under the name of its subsidiary, Coos Bay Pulp Corporation, through 1960. From 1961 until the plant closed in 1978 it was known as the Scott Paper Mill. Despite the name, no paper was made at the plant. It produced bales of pulp that went by rail, ship and truck to U.S. and international paper mills. The Eagle’s hall put on a farewell dinner for the mill attended by nearly 200 people. Many of the former workers were transferred to similar Scott Paper Mills in nearby Hamilton and Everett.

On this date in 1979, officials conducted the shakedown cruise of the ferry Guemes (or the Guemes II). The new ferry had just made a 66,000-mile voyage through the Panama Canal from the shipyard in Somerset, Mass., where it was built. At the helm was Capt. Robert Hamstead of Massachusetts, who also skippered the ferry on the long trip. The 16-car Guemes replaced the 9-car Almar.