Captain Frank V. Hogan, first Mayor, 1891
Councilmen probably avoided tangling with the first Mayor of Anacortes. Hogan was tough.
He was born in Bastrop, Texas, seven years before the state joined the Union. At age 20, he became a Texas Ranger, helping safeguard the area for settlers.
Hogan later fought in the Confederate Army, was wounded, and helped capture the man-of-war Winslow, a daring event that caught the world's attention. "An enemy gunboat was lying off Galveston and by night we loaded several flatboats with bales of cotton, concealing the troops behind them," he recalled. "The ship's captain did not know what to make of it until we ran alongside and sprang on board."
After the war, still hot for a fight, Hogan headed to Mexico to serve with Emperor Maximilian but was persuaded it was a lost cause and turned back. Home for a time, he then left Texas for California and made his way to Anacortes in 1888.
Here he invested in land and with a partner established "Hogan and Hagan," a firm that handled property for the Oregon Improvement Company. Hogan was elected Anacortes' first mayor when the town incorporated in 1891, and served another two terms in 1904 and 1915. He proved a strong promoter of the town but was averse to publicity about himself, sharing his story only under the condition it be published after his death.
But the Mayor wasn't shy when it came to cleaning up the town's coarser elements. A certain "Peg-Leg Loomis" was one of the worst. When a group of citizens tried to run him out of town, Loomis armed and barricaded himself in a shack near Second Street, threatening to shoot the first man who came near.
The townspeople appealed to the former Texas Ranger, who boldly approached the shack and called out to Loomis that it was "his move." According to one account, Hogan "described his attributes forcefully and full-voiced and told him to get - instantly. If he left within an hour, no one would harm him, but if he tarried they would come get him and hang him." Loomis left.
After the bottom dropped out of Anacortes' boom, Hogan resumed his adventurous ways and headed up to Alaska and the Yukon, then eventually wandered back to Anacortes.
He married twice and had four daughters. Near the end of his 89 years, the old war hero took pride in outliving four doctors who told him he was on the brink of death, noting with satisfaction that "I've attended the funerals of every blankety-blank one of them."
- From Colorful Characters and Local Lore exhibit, Anacortes Museum, 2008
