The Industrial Kingdom of Port Gamble
In 1872, the Puget Mill Company reigned supreme over a company town that prioritized industrial output and 'refinement'—with a cemetery view to match.
Port Gamble is situated upon one of the most beautiful of the innumerable coves extending out of Puget Sound. It is one of the most ponderous and extensive lumber mill establishments in this or any other country, owned and conducted by the 'Puget Mill Company.' The year 1871 was generally known as a dull year for the lumber business, yet the statistics furnished by the book-keeper, Henry Race, Esq., are astonishing: 29,000,000 feet of lumber, 4,000,000 laths, and 3,250,000 shingles. The town, which is owned almost entirely by the Mill Company, includes, besides the mill and warehouses, many neat and tasteful private residences. The brow of the hill is crowned with an imposing Masonic Hall, and upon a gentle elevation overlooking the town and the waters of the bay, gleams through the green foliage the freshly painted white fence of a cemetery, exhibiting a degree of care for the dead which is a rare evidence of the refinement of the living inhabitants.
“The brow of the hill is crowned with an imposing Masonic Hall, and upon a gentle elevation... gleams through the green foliage the freshly painted white fence of a cemetery, exhibiting a degree of care for the dead which is a rare evidence of the refinement of the living inhabitants.”
Port Gamble remains a hauntingly preserved example of a 19th-century company town, now managed as a historic site rather than a private corporate fiefdom. Its story captures the tension of the Pacific Northwest's identity: remote, breathtakingly beautiful, and historically tethered to the extraction of timber.
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