The Battle for the Bay: Fairhaven Claims Independence
After a fierce two-day contest before county commissioners, Fairhaven successfully blocks its neighbors from annexing its waterfront.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
At the date of the last issue of the Herald, a contest was pending before the board of county commissioners regarding the boundaries of Fairhaven. The citizens of Fairhaven and Bellingham sought to have the boundaries of Fairhaven fixed and determined under the general law relating to municipal corporations. The point in controversy involved the settlement of the boundary line between Fairhaven and the proposed city of New Whatcom. The Fairhaven petition asked the boundary line to be determined to include the town of Bellingham, while the Sehome petition asked that Sehome, Bellingham, and enough adjacent land to cover twenty-three and a half square miles be included in New Whatcom. The contest concluded Friday by an order of the commissioners granting Fairhaven its desired boundaries. An election notice is published today for the incorporation of Fairhaven as a city of the third class, to be held on Tuesday, May 6, 1890.
“Fairhaven has taken another long stride in advance and our Sehome friends are correspondingly unhappy.”
This territorial dispute highlights the ruthless 'growth machine' era of the late 1880s in Bellingham Bay, where cities fought to annex each other to secure waterfront access. Today, the consolidation of Fairhaven, Sehome, and Whatcom into the modern city of Bellingham reflects the end of this period of intense municipal rivalry.
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