There was a lot of history in the three-story house at 3903 H Ave. in Anacortes.
On Dec. 22, the once grand house and its 135 years of history were reduced by fire to a pile of wood and brick.
It was built in 1885 and was one of the oldest structures in Anacortes. When its builder and first occupant, Scottish-born rancher William Gray, homesteaded 160 acres here in 1882, the fledgling town had only a hotel on Second Street near Cap Sante, used as a lodging home by early settlers; and the Bowman Store and Post Office.
Only 30 years earlier, the region’s Indigenous leaders signed the Treaty of Point Elliott, making land available for newcomers. Washington wouldn’t become a state for four years after Gray’s house was completed, and Anacortes wouldn’t become a city for six.
December 23, 2020 at 9:03 am
“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” has been a fixture on national TV every year since 1964. But not many people know that the animated narrator of the show has a direct connection to the Northwest.
Burl Ives, the Academy Award-winning actor who performed the voice of the narrator Sam the Snowman, lived in Anacortes in Skagit County on Fidalgo Island from 1989 until he passed away in 1995. Ives and his wife Dorothy – who passed away in 2016 – moved to Anacortes after visiting a friend there. As it turns out, the couple left something of a special “Rudolph” legacy in Anacortes that still resonates decades after they first arrived.