Holiday Revels and the 'Bronze Fountain' at Port Gamble
A glimpse into a settler's New Year’s social circle in 1877, featuring ambitious landscaping, amateur theater, and a bustling mill town economy.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Port Gamble, W.T., Jan. 2, 1877. Christmas has been and gone delightfully, with nothing occurring to mar the recreative interim or to disturb the uniform placidity of our citizens. A kernel of fashionably attended was given on the festive night, and with the coming of the day, copious imbibing of exhilarating wine and gulping down of that which 'steals away the brains' made up the joyous occasion. I must not forget the little people; they were quite as merry and unwearied in their joy as their elders, and in a manner. As New Year’s Day passed by, bringing the usual formalities, it had no distinguishing features from any other day, and now we are driving for 1877, while many are indulging, searching after the ‘noble shiner’ for the service of forgetting one another and making countless business humors. Mr. Wm. Walker is having a fine bronze fountain erected upon the yard plot of Mr. Cyrus Walker’s residence immediately, in front of that house, which will be quite an ornament when Spring with its charms shall be upon us. The adjacent park, the silvery lake upon the hill, the broad expanse of waters, will all tend to out-rival Joaquin Miller’s Shasta. The public school re-opened this morning, under Mr. Miles, with attendance. The Amateur Corps Dramatique, Manager G.H. Dwelly, is billed for Naval Engagements on Saturday evening next. Mr. Wm. Walker and lady assume the leading, with the manager and Mrs. Weston and Hon. Ben Miller, of Weston. Mr. Chanstor, from Boston, will assist with songs, droll eccentricity, etc., and he is good. The new mill is ‘going it’ night and day in order to fill up pressing orders, hence there is employment for all who desire.
“A kernel of fashionably attended was given on the festive night, and with the coming of the day, copious imbibing of exhilarating wine and gulping down of that which 'steals away the brains' made up the joyous occasion.”
Port Gamble, a company town, remains one of the best-preserved historic mill sites in the country. The 1877 obsession with 'out-rivaling' natural wonders like Mount Shasta mirrors the modern Pacific Northwest's ongoing, sometimes tense, struggle to balance rapid industrial growth and luxury residential development with the region's inherent, rugged aesthetic beauty.
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