Anacortes and Fidalgo Island, From Someone Who Grew Up Here

Anacortes sits on Fidalgo Island at the top of Skagit County, a working waterfront town and the gateway to the San Juan Islands. People who have never been here picture one thing, usually the ferry. People who live here know Anacortes neighborhoods as fifteen different places with fifteen different characters: the historic streets of Old Town near downtown and the water, the hillside lots of Stittwood with their bay and island views, the madronas and Burrows Bay views of Biz Point at the south end, the headland of Cap Sante above the marina, the lakes and forest lands on the south side of the island.

It is an island, and it lives like one. The water is on three sides of most conversations. Boats are a normal way to get somewhere. The weather arrives from the west and the light changes a dozen times a day. The Anacortes Community Forest Lands and the trails around Whistle Lake and Campbell Lake are minutes from town, and the marina, the downtown blocks, and the working waterfront, including the refinery across the bay at March Point, are all part of the same view.

DiAnn Sager has lived nearly her whole life here. Her family worked these islands, the Skagit Valley, and the fishing grounds of Alaska for generations, which is where the phrase "Daughter of the Pioneers" on her bio comes from. That kind of tenure is not a credential. It is knowing which streets get the morning sun, which roads flood in a wet winter, which HOAs are reasonable, and which neighborhoods the locals actually want to live in.

DiAnn works fifteen Anacortes neighborhoods, and each has its own page, written from the county record, the City, and her own closed sales.

• Old Town: the historic core of Anacortes, close to downtown and the waterfront.
• Cap Sante: the headland above the marina on the east side of downtown.
• Stittwood: a platted hillside neighborhood with water and island views from many lots, where DiAnn has represented original-owner homes looking out over Fidalgo Bay.
• Biz Point: a south Fidalgo Island community on Burrows Bay, with water views and permitted mooring buoys off some properties.
• Skyline and Westside: the west side of the island, on the water side.
• Whistle Lake: south Anacortes near the Whistle Lake trails and the Anacortes Community Forest Lands.
• Campbell Lake: south Fidalgo Island around the lake.
• South Anacortes: the south end of the city, toward the lakes and the forest lands.
• Oakes Ave: the Oakes Avenue corridor on the way out toward the ferry.
• Clearridge, Rockridge, Navigator, Sunset, and Mariners: Anacortes neighborhoods DiAnn works regularly.

Each neighborhood page links down to what selling or buying looks like there, from selling your home and rightsizing to buying a home and relocating.

Anacortes is where the Washington State Ferries leave for the San Juan Islands, and the Oakes Avenue corridor is the road out to the terminal. The valley towns of Burlington and Mount Vernon are on the mainland up the road, and Whidbey Island is across the water to the south. The Anacortes School District serves the city. By road, downtown at 10th and Commercial is 3.8 miles from the ferry terminal, 17 miles from the Burlington I-5 exit, and 41 miles from downtown Bellingham (OpenStreetMap routing, September 2026).

The lifestyle is the water and the woods. The Cap Sante marina, the working waterfront, the community forest lands, the lake trails, and a downtown you can walk end to end are the daily texture of the place. The honest trade-off is the one every islander knows: you are at the end of the road, on purpose, and that is the point for the people who choose it.

Thinking about a move here, or out of here? Tell DiAnn what you are thinking. Just exploring is a perfectly good place to start.