Fishtown (art colony)

It was part of the larger Skagit Valley arts community, centered on the town of La Conner, but was rustic and isolated, without electricity or plumbing, and tended to attract younger and more eccentric artists.

Charles Krafft, who went on to international attention and controversy as a ceramicist, was for over ten years the "self-proclaimed Mayor of Fishtown";[1][2] another longtime resident was Robert Sund, who, along with several other poets, developed a recognizable Pacific Northwest style of poetry.

[5][6][7] A desire to live a more natural and simple lifestyle was an important aspect of the hippie counterculture of the 1960s; this impulse lead to the creation of hundreds of new co-operative communities in the United States.

north of Seattle), an area where mist-filtered sunlight brought soft illumination to river-crossed farmland ringed by forested mountains, marshes, coastal tidelands, and the expanse of Puget Sound.

[10] In 1968 he joined sculptor Art Jorgenson as a settler of "Fishtown", the local name given to a group of fishing shacks connected by an elevated boardwalk, near where the North Fork of the Skagit River empties into Puget Sound.

"[6] By the early 1970s Fishtown had a steady flow of visitors and several year-round residents, with Krafft serving as the commune's "self-proclaimed mayor", organizing basic logistics - although, as Bo Miller would later point out, "There was no control over anybody else's life out there.

A group of abandoned cabins a short distance upriver gradually became part of the community,[12] while further downriver poet Robert Sund built up his own shack, which became a meeting place for the group of poets known as The Great Blue Heron Society - at various times including Paul Hansen, Glenn Turner, Clifford Burke, Tim McNulty, Sam Hamill, Finn Wilcox, Steve Herold, and others.

Weather permitting, artists picnicked together, explored the sloughs in leaky scows, danced all night and even roller skated en masse regularly.

Charles Krafft was key in organizing Skagit Valley artists' participation in the Northwest/New York exhibitions at the Bayard Gallery in Soho in 1980 - 81, although he himself had moved back to Seattle in 1980.

Residents and supporters used protest and legal action to try and stave off the logging trucks, culminating in a clash in which renowned artist Richard Gilkey and several others, including Shuksan Earth First!ers, were arrested by Skagit County sheriff's deputies.