Avon, Washington is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

Skagit County, Washington Skagit County is a county in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 129,523. The county seat and largest city is Mount Vernon. The county was formed in 1883 from Whatcom County and is named for the Upper and ...

, along the

Skagit River The Skagit River ( ) is a river in southwestern British Columbia in Canada and northwestern Washington (state), Washington in the United States, approximately 150 mi (240 km) long. The river and its tributaries drain an area of 1.7&nbs ...

. Its neighboring towns include

Mount Vernon Mount Vernon is the former residence and plantation of George Washington, a Founding Father, commander of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War, and the first president of the United States, and his wife, Martha. An American landmar ...

and Burlington. Local historians have speculated that Avon is named after

Stratford-upon-Avon Stratford-upon-Avon ( ), commonly known as Stratford, is a market town and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon (district), Stratford-on-Avon district, in the county of Warwickshire, in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands region of Engl ...

. The Avon area was developed as a waterfront town and logging and docking area on the West side of the

. The place of the original waterfront area is East of Bennett road and South of Avon St. Before 1879, two

log jam A log jam is a naturally occurring phenomenon characterized by a dense accumulation of tree trunks and pieces of large wood across a vast section of a river, stream, or lake. ("Large wood" is commonly defined to be pieces of wood more than in di ...

s East of Mount Vernon blocked the

further West. Along the docking area,

Western Red cedar ''Thuja plicata'' is a large evergreen coniferous tree in the family Cupressaceae, native to the Pacific Northwest of North America. Its common name is western redcedar in the U.S. or western red cedar in the UK, and it is also called pacific re ...

were cut down, harvested for shingle bolts. After the logging, the land was cleared and Avon became a town. Early

homesteaders The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could acquire ownership of government land or the public domain, typically called a homestead. In all, more than of public land, or nearly 10 percent of t ...

of the area were Thomas McCain in 1876 and Charles Conrad in 1881. Arthur Henry Skaling opened a store October 27, 1883, on land he purchased from W.H. Miller who had settled there the year before. According to early resident Ada Hall, W.H. Miller settled this property in 1874 and built the first house there. Soon Avon had a shingle mill, a post office, a boat builder, several stores, an implement company, a newspaper (''The Avon Record''), a restaurant, a hotel, a barber shop, stage line and two milliners. Methodists organized a church in 1884, and built the present building dates to 1887 with Rev. Moore giving the dedicatory service. Rev. Vroman was the first regular preacher. The church was originally much closer to the river on the Eastern section of what is now called Avon St. It was moved around 1920 to its present location. By 1889 the population reached 500. The Avon school was at the SW corner of Avon Allen road and Bennett road. It was built in 1892 and the gymnasium structure is still there. There was also an

IOOF The Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) is a non-political, non-sectarian international fraternal order of Odd Fellowship. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Wildey in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Evolving from the Odd Fellows, Order ...

Hall built in 1891 and stood at the SE corner of the town, which is now where Bennett road makes a curve to the West. This building is no longer there. In 1906, the Avon Post Office was closed and transferred to Mount Vernon. After the flooding of 1909 many of the waterfront buildings were moved away from the river to be protected by the newly constructed dike. As the importance of waterways for transportation and industry decreased, and the use of rail and autos increased, the waterfront town of Avon slowly ceased to be a town and became a quiet residential community. Most of the original buildings are no longer there except for a few homes built before 1900, the school gymnasium, and the

Methodist church Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christianity, Christian Christian tradition, tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother ...

References

{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Washington (state) Unincorporated communities in Skagit County, Washington