Main Street in Edmonds, WA ends at the ferry landing for Kingston. Around it the city has a downtown the state certified as its first Creative District, weekday Sounder trains and Amtrak at Edmonds Station, a tidal marsh with a boardwalk, and a protected underwater park beside the ferry dock.
How did a shingle-mill town become Edmonds?
It began with a logger. George Brackett is generally recognized as the founder, though accounts differ on the details of his first land purchase in the 1870s. He drained marshes, built a cabin and started to log, opened the first store in 1880 and became postmaster four years later. Accounts of the name conflict too: HistoryLink gives either Vermont senator George Franklin Edmunds or Point Edwards, first charted as Point Edmund during the Wilkes expedition.
A favorite local legend says the count for incorporation came up two short of the 300 residents required, so townspeople added the names of Brackett’s bull and his cattle dog. HistoryLink, which retells the story, says there is no evidence it is true. What is on record: the county confirmed the incorporation election on August 11, 1890, the Secretary of State filed the order on August 14, and Brackett was the first mayor.
Shingle mills lined the waterfront for decades. As publisher-historian Ray Cloud wrote, on June 1, 1951 “the fires went out for the last time under the boilers of the Quality Shingle Company’s mill.” In 1924 voters had made Alice U. Kerr mayor, one of the first women mayors in the state.
The waterfront, from the ferry dock north
Just north of the ferry landing, Edmonds Underwater Park covers more than 27 acres of tide and bottom lands, about half of it developed with features and trails for divers, according to the city. It was established at Brackett’s Landing in 1970 as a marine preserve and sanctuary. Its first feature was the 325-foot De Lion Dry Dock, sunk in 1935 as a current buffer, and in 2007 the city named the trail system the Bruce Higgins Underwater Trails. The state’s Brackett’s Landing Shoreline Sanctuary Conservation Area, a separately mapped area that takes in the park, is closed to fishing and shellfish harvest.
The Edmonds Marsh is, in the city’s words, one of the few urban, tidally influenced saltwater estuaries remaining in the Puget Sound area. Its interpretive walkway includes more than 300 feet of boardwalk, and the city says the marsh hosts up to 90 species of birds over a year.
The city counts 1 mile of shoreline and 47 park and open-space sites across 230 acres. HistoryLink credits the Edmonds Port District, created in 1948, with the state’s first public saltwater fishing pier.
What is downtown Edmonds like?
The Washington State Arts Commission lists downtown Edmonds as the state’s first Certified Creative District. The city describes the district as the heart of downtown: arts and culture, creative businesses, public gathering places, parks and historic buildings.
Several of those buildings are on their second use, by HistoryLink’s account. The Princess Theater of 1923 became the Edmonds Theater. The 1930s art-deco high-school auditorium was renovated in 2006 as the Edmonds Center for the Arts, and the historical museum is in the former Carnegie Library, built with a $5,000 grant awarded in 1910. Woodway, Lynnwood and Mountlake Terrace are separate, adjacent municipalities.
Edmonds Arts Festival
Each Father’s Day weekend the Edmonds Arts Festival sets up at the Frances Anderson Center, 700 Main Street, with artist booths, galleries of juried work, a student art exhibit and free live entertainment. The 2026 festival was the 69th and admission was free, according to The Seattle Times.
How do you get around from Edmonds?
By water, rail or bus, and the schedules matter. Ferries cross Puget Sound to Kingston. Sounder’s N Line stops at Edmonds Station on weekdays only: Sound Transit’s current schedule shows morning trains toward Seattle and afternoon trains back toward Everett. Amtrak Cascades trains stop there too. For Link light rail, Community Transit Routes 130 and 909 run from Edmonds Station to Mountlake Terrace Station, and Routes 102 and 130 run to Lynnwood City Center Station.
Living here
A legend about a bull on the census rolls, a dry dock sunk to break the current, a downtown certified for its arts: Edmonds keeps its stories close to the water, and tells the legend as a legend.
If you are weighing a move to Edmonds, or selling a home here, Chase Hedin, Managing Broker, can help you think through how the downtown bowl, the waterfront and the ferry and rail schedules fit your plans. Start a conversation or ask what your home is worth.