The population was 91, at the census , [ 5 ] and estimated to be 94, in Bellingham is the northernmost city with a population of more than 90, people in the contiguous United States. The area around Bellingham Bay , named in by George Vancouver , is the ancestral home of several Coast Salish groups.
European settlement in modern-day Bellingham began in the s and several coal mining towns grew in later years. The city of Bellingham was incorporated in through the consolidation of several settlements, among them Fairhaven.
Local industries shifted away from coal in the midth century; the industrial areas on the Bellingham waterfront have undergone redevelopment into a mixed-use neighborhood since the s. Bellingham has been inhabited by Indigenous peoples for millennia.
The city of Bellingham and its surrounding area is the intersection of the territories of many Coast Salishan peoples. The Lummi , Nooksack , Samish , and Nuwhaha in particular fished in Bellingham Bay and shared the hunting and gathering grounds in the nearby forests and prairies. The modern city of Bellingham, incorporated in , consolidated four settlements: Bellingham, Whatcom, Fairhaven, and Sehome. The first European immigrants reached the area about when Henry Roeder and Russel Peabody set up a lumber mill at Whatcom, now the northern part of Bellingham.
Lumber cutting and milling continues to the present in Whatcom county. At about the same time, Dan Harris arrived, claiming a homestead along Padden Creek, and after acquiring surrounding properties, platted the town of Fairhaven in In , the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush caused a short lived population growth that established the community.
