24/7 Biohazard and Crime Scene Cleanup in Concrete, WA

Concrete is a town in north-central Skagit County, Washington, set where the Baker River meets the Skagit River in the foothills of the North Cascades.

The settlement began as "Minnehaha" at the rivers' junction, was platted in 1890 and renamed Baker, while a rival settlement called Cement City grew up across the Baker River around the Washington Portland Cement Company plant built in 1905.

After the Superior Portland Cement Company opened its own plant at Baker in 1908, the two towns merged, chose the name Concrete, and officially incorporated on May 8, 1909.

Cement made from local limestone and clay deposits was the town's lifeblood for six decades; Superior Portland Cement bought out its rival in 1919, grew into the largest cement producer on the Pacific Coast, and production continued into the late 1960s.

The old Superior plant's towering silos still stand over town at Silo Park, painted with "Welcome to Concrete" lettering for the filming of the 1993 movie "This Boy's Life" in the town.

Writer Tobias Wolff, who attended Concrete High School, set his memoir "This Boy's Life" in the town; the film adaptation starred a young Leonardo DiCaprio as Wolff.

During Orson Welles's 1938 "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast, a short circuit at the cement plant's electrical substation blacked out Concrete in a flash of light mid-broadcast, convincing many frightened residents that the fictional invasion was real.

The Henry Thompson Bridge, built in 1916–1918 across the Baker River, was hailed at its completion as the longest single-span reinforced concrete bridge in the world and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

After a series of Main Street fires, Concrete rebuilt much of its downtown out of concrete itself, including the 1923 Concrete Theatre and the 1918 Concrete Herald building.

The 2020 census counted 801 residents in Concrete, up from 705 in 2010 but still below the town's cement-boom peak of 945 people in 1910.