Anacortes — Working Port, Ferry Terminal, Refinery Town, Fishing Fleet
Anacortes sits on Fidalgo Island in Skagit County, connected to the Washington mainland not by ferry but by a fixed highway bridge -- the twin spans of State Route 20 crossing the Swinomish Channel, a 3,545-foot structure completed in stages in 1972 and 1981 and named for former State Representative Duane Berentson, an Anacortes native. That bridge connection is the detail that separates Anacortes from the San Juan Islands it serves: Lopez, Shaw, Orcas, and San Juan Island are all ferry-only, but Anacortes itself is a drive-to town that happens to host the actual Washington State Ferries terminal those islands depend on. The Anacortes-San Juan Islands route carried roughly 1.89 million passengers and 921,000 vehicles in 2022 alone, a volume that has grown from about 711,500 riders in 1975 and that pushed Washington State Ferries to add a mandatory reservation system for the route in January 2015 after chronic summer overcrowding. The same terminal also hosted a seasonal international run to Sidney, British Columbia, through the San Juans -- suspended since 2020 for pandemic and vessel-shortage reasons and not expected back, per state ferry officials, until at least 2030. Beyond the ferry dock, Anacortes carries an economic identity most coastal towns this site covers do not share: two operating petroleum refineries sit at March Point on the town's edge, Marathon Petroleum's Anacortes Refinery (roughly 119,000 barrels-per-day capacity, built in 1955) and the Puget Sound Refinery (formerly Shell, now run by HF Sinclair), together among Skagit County's largest employers. Layered under both the ferries and the refineries is a genuine commercial fishing heritage -- Samish and Swinomish tribal fishing on these waters long predates the canneries built here in the 1890s, and Anacortes' own purse-seine fleet, boats built locally for generations, still docks at Cap Sante Boat Haven. This page states plainly where a figure was confirmed and where it was not: home-price sources disagree with each other by tens of thousands of dollars, and this page does not smooth that disagreement into a single invented number.
What Actually Makes Anacortes Different
Anacortes is easy to misfile as just another San Juan Islands town, but the geography doesn't support that. It sits on Fidalgo Island, which is connected to the Washington mainland by a fixed highway bridge -- the twin spans of State Route 20 over the Swinomish Channel -- rather than by ferry. That single fact changes the practical experience of living here in a way that matters for a buyer: you can drive to Anacortes any hour of any day, load a moving truck, run to Costco in Mount Vernon, or get to Interstate 5 without ever touching a ferry schedule. The islands Anacortes is famous for serving -- Lopez, Shaw, Orcas, and San Juan Island -- have no such option; a resident there plans life around sailing times. Anacortes residents plan life around the ferry only when they're headed out to visit those islands themselves, or when ferry traffic backs up through town during peak summer sailing waves, which is a real, recurring local nuisance worth knowing about before buying near the terminal approach.
The terminal itself is a genuinely major piece of state transportation infrastructure, not a quaint local dock. Washington State Ferries' Anacortes-San Juan Islands route carried roughly 1.89 million passengers and 921,000 vehicles in 2022, a volume that has grown from about 711,500 annual riders in 1975 and that some more recent industry figures put closer to 2 million riders and over 942,000 vehicles. Chronic summer overcrowding pushed the state to introduce a vehicle reservation system for the route in January 2015, and reservations remain the practical way to guarantee a sailing during peak season rather than simply showing up and waiting in the holding lanes. The route's international leg -- Anacortes through the San Juans to Sidney, British Columbia -- has been suspended since 2020, first for pandemic reasons and now, per state officials, because of an ongoing vessel shortage; Washington State Ferries has said that service is not expected to resume until at least 2030. A buyer weighing Anacortes specifically for cross-border access to Vancouver Island should build that multi-year gap into their planning rather than assume the Sidney run is coming back soon.
What genuinely sets Anacortes apart from most coastal towns on this site, though, is what sits at March Point on the town's own edge: two full-scale, currently operating petroleum refineries. Marathon Petroleum's Anacortes Refinery, with a crude capacity around 119,000 barrels per calendar day, traces back to 1955 and, at peak construction, employed roughly 3,200 workers -- a buildout that fundamentally reshaped a town previously dependent on natural-resource extraction and fish canning. The second facility, long known as Shell's Puget Sound Refinery and now operated by HF Sinclair, sits alongside it. Together these refineries are among Skagit County's largest employers, and their presence is a real, sourced economic fact that shapes local jobs, tax base, industrial traffic on Highway 20, and the town's relationship to petroleum shipping through the Salish Sea -- a genuinely different economic profile than a tourism-only coastal market, worth understanding honestly rather than glossing over.
Underneath the ferries and the refineries runs an older, real fishing identity. The Samish and Swinomish peoples fished these waters long before European and American settlers arrived, and Anacortes' own commercial fishing industry took off in the 1890s with canneries built to process cod, clams, and salmon. Salmon were caught here by traps, reef nets, gillnets, trollers, and purse seiners -- many of the seiners themselves built locally -- and that purse-seine fleet still docks today at Cap Sante Boat Haven, a marina the city built during the Great Depression to replace the old "City Float" at the foot of Q Avenue on Guemes Channel. Cap Sante Marina today holds roughly 950 slips for vessels up to 120 feet and operates as a U.S. customs port of entry, a scale that reflects Anacortes' continuing role as a working port, not merely a marina town.
Several things this research could not pin down with the confidence this page requires to state as settled fact: a single reliable Anacortes-specific median home price (Redfin, Zillow, and forecast sources disagreed by tens of thousands of dollars in the same general period), a confirmed current earthquake-insurance takeup rate or premium range specific to Anacortes, and a confirmed combined sales-tax rate distinct from the general Skagit County range. Anyone evaluating a purchase or move here should confirm current numbers directly with the Skagit County Assessor's Office, the City of Anacortes Planning Department, a Washington-licensed insurance broker, and the Anacortes School District rather than assuming a figure found online is current.
Independent research. No ads. No sponsored listings. Facts here are drawn from: the City of Anacortes' own website (anacorteswa.gov) for property tax structure, demographics, fishing, and short-term rental information; Washington State Ferries and WSDOT (wsdot.wa.gov) for Anacortes-San Juan Islands route ridership, reservation history, and the suspended Sidney, BC service; the Washington State Department of Natural Resources' Washington Geological Survey tsunami-inundation mapping for Anacortes, as reported by goskagit.com (Skagit Valley Herald); Marathon Petroleum's own refinery materials and general refining-industry reporting (including Wikipedia and Grokipedia summaries) for the Anacortes Refinery's capacity and history, and the Puget Sound Refinery's ownership history from Shell to HF Sinclair; the Anacortes Museum (anacortes.pastperfectonline.com) for fishing-fleet and Cap Sante Boat Haven history; the U.S. Census Bureau and secondary demographic aggregators (Point2Homes, Washington-Demographics, NeighborhoodScout) for population, median age, and income figures; Redfin, Zillow, and Movoto for home-price snapshots, explicitly flagged here as disagreeing with each other; and the Washington Department of Revenue for state and local sales-tax structure. Facts not independently confirmed and not invented here include: a single reliable Anacortes-specific median home price; a confirmed Anacortes-specific earthquake-insurance premium or takeup rate; and Anacortes' exact current combined sales-tax rate as distinct from the general Skagit County range. Confirm all current facts directly with the City of Anacortes, the Skagit County Assessor's Office, a Washington-licensed insurance broker, the Anacortes School District, and a local buyer's agent before making a purchase, relocation, or investment decision. Nothing on this page is legal, tax, financial, or insurance advice.