Ferndale History 

The site of the City of Ferndale was originally known to the Lummi Indians as Te-tas-um. Early white settlers called the area near the Nooksack River the lower crossing to distinguish it from the principal crossing of the river at Everson. 

Billy Clark, a Texan who came to the northwest during the Gold Rush, was the first resident of Ferndale. He lived here with his wife and family for over a decade. 

When Billy sought to prove the ownership of his property, he was stunned to learn that he could not. Some years earlier, he had relinquished his American citizenship in order to be employed at the Hudson Bay Company at Fort Langley, Canada. Therefore, because he was now an English citizen, Billy Clark was not eligible to claim title to the property. He sought help from an old friend, Darius Rogers, who was employed at the Bellingham Coal Mine. Rogers promptly filed claim to the 174 acre site, which made him the first legal owner of the property. Billy Clark eventually left and built a new homestead at East Sound on Orcas Island. 

When Rogers secured his claim in 1882, there were only a few white neighbors; Thomas Barrett, who lived by the lake that bears his name, Thomas Wynn and John Tennant, both with Native American wives, and perhaps a dozen other settlers in the area. 

John Tennant helped to organize the first school and establish the first church. Thomas Wynn established the first blacksmith shop and brought in the first wagon to the area. The settlement was now referred to as Jam during this time due to a large log jam on the Nooksack River. 

Most of the settlers of the area in the 1870s based their operations at locations near the river. There were no roads; meandering, muddy trails wound through the woods, and the people used the river as their highway. 

The strength of resources for fishing and lumbering brought early settlers, many from Scandinavia. A multitude of small mills were built along the Nooksack and gradually the forests receded to reveal the fertile soil beneath. Agriculture soon became an important industry and has remained key to the area. 

In 1884, the Northwest Diagonal Road was opened up to Ferndale, and connected up with a road that ran through Custer to Blaine. Wooden plank roads were also developed to aid in travel through the muddy terrain. In 1886, the Guide Meridian Road was opened, but Whatcom County remained rustic and isolated until 1893, when the Great Northern built its railway line across the western part of the County, through Ferndale, to Blaine, and on to Vancouver, British Columbia.

The city of Ferndale was also shaped by a number of other outside events. The Treaty of 1846, fixing the boundary between American and English soil, brought a large crew to survey the 49th parallel, clearing a 40 foot gap along the line. The San Francisco fire caused the price of lumber to skyrocket, which resulted in the building of the first sawmill in Bellingham. The Fraser River gold Rush of 1858 brought thousands of prospectors through the area, on what they hoped would be the road to wealth. The race to build a telegraph line to Europe via Seattle, Alaska, the Bering Sea and Asia dragged a trail across the County and left fragments of the Telegraph Road that still remain today. A generation ago, it was almost impossible to foresee that Ferndale would house the location of two large oil refineries, which process oil from Alaska and other continents. No less remarkable, is the fact that the shipment of Alumina from Australia brought Intalco Aluminum, once the County's largest employer. 

Ferndale began its existence as a "town" under Washington law when it was incorporated in 1907.