La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

Before there was a Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, there was a La Conner Tulip Show.

And before the tulip show here, there was a La Conner Rose Show.

Plus a fall dahlia show.

All because, as the late Philena Dunlap noted 40 years ago this August, La Conner has long had the good fortune of having "a group of women who were dedicated in their desire to work together for the benefit of all in the town they loved."

That tradition took root with the founding in 1909 of the Civic Improvement Club of La Conner, Dunlap explained in a profile in a "Making La Conner Go" series run in the Channel To...