Located in the heart of Skagit Valley, Mount Vernon is a charming community with a rich collection of historic resources.  These resources include a downtown that boasts an intact streetscape of historic commercial buildings and fraternal orders providing the city with a truly unique sense of place.  This downtown core offers the National Register-listed Lincoln Theater, a historic square symbolic of the city’s origins featuring intact examples of false-front architecture, and commercial buildings decorated with ornate terra cotta.

Unfortunately, Mount Vernon had some difficult choices to make to insure that predicted 100-year flood levels would not threaten its future. To address future floods, the city developed a master plan which called for the removal of some historic resources and in 2007, the Washington Trust for placed the core downtown area on its Most Endangered Places list. As part of its compliance with state and federal laws, the city undertook a survey of downtown resources and entered into a Memorandum of Agreement with the Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation in 2008. While some resources were lost in the construction effort, much of the core historic streetscape is intact and thriving.

Read more from our “40 for 40” featured story from the Washington Trust’s 40th anniversary in 2016.