Located in western Skagit County, La Conner was named for the wife (Louisa Ann Conner) of an early settler, John S.Conner who came from Olympia in 1869 and bought the land upon which the town subsequently grew.

La Conner was once county seat and most populous town in the Skagit Valley. Bounded by farmland, the Swinomish Channel and the Swinomish Indian Reservation, it was an up-to-date town and lively terminus for river steamers bringing timber and lumber down from the upper Skagit, and port for farm commodities grown in the surrounding delta flatlands.

Today, La Conner has a population of around 800 residents. The town area has a main street with quaint shops, galleries and restaurants. You can find bed and breakfasts, cottages and other hideaways throughout the Skagit Valley area.

One of the largest attractions of the year is the annual Tulip festival. In the 1930s, tulips were planted for bulbs in the surrounding flatland by Dutch immigrants. There are hundreds of acres of  tulips and daffodils in bloom every spring, and thousands of tourist come every year to see the spectacle.

The La Conner area is also home to many artists. There are painters, photographers, potters and more.  Author, Tom Robbins, moved there in the 1970s. There is a long tradition of art in La Conner. In the 1930s, La Conner began to attract artists. In 1937, Painter Morris Graves moved to town, found a burned out house on the hill, moved in, and invited another young artist, Guy Anderson (1906-1998), to share it.

The Museum of Northwest Art, a museum devoted to preserving and displaying the exceptional art of the region, includes work from the artists of The Northwest Mystic School of painters,  Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Guy Anderson, and Kenneth Callahan. It also has continual exhibitions of contemporary artists.

Sources:
HistoryLink.org Essay 5655