I personally prefer to think that the OT town of Anchorhead was only founded maybe a couple generations before ANH by human settlers, and that KOTOR’s Anchorhead was essentially a different town by the same name that no longer exists by the time of the Empire.
I imagine there would be only a couple hundred residents or so, a large portion of which would be children that young Luke might have played with and befriended. Unlike Mos Eisley, the town would be predominantly human. The town itself wouldn’t have a spaceport, but there would be regular travel between Anchorhead and the closest port towns, like Mos Eisley. Anchorhead would also be close enough to Luke’s home for him to not feel uncomfortable giving Ben a ride there. Basically, the town would have been in the same “neighborhood,” and part of Luke’s mundane world, and so wouldn’t represent the same threshold crossing as Mos Eisley did.