Port Discovery’s Busy Wharves and the Mill That Ran Full Time
A short steamer voyage from Port Townsend in 1876 found new wharves, a bigger engine house, and a lumber mill employing about 100 men.
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.
Last Friday, through the courtesy of the master of the steamer Mastick, Capt. Cannick, we were made the recipient of a pleasant trip to Port Discovery. On board were Commissioner C. E. P. Wood, just returned from San Francisco, his estimable lady and little boy, and Mr. Wm. Delanty. The weather was quiet, albeit a little moist, the boat in good trim, and in a little less than two hours’ time—with the disadvantage of towing a schooner about half the distance—the Port Discovery dock was reached. Upon the wharf were congregated, among others, our friends Downs, Atkinson, Gooch and Smith, by whom the voyagers were heartily welcomed.
But it was mainly to notice some of the improvements taking place here that we were led to commence this item. Since our last visit, about a year ago, a new wharf has been run out upon which to erect a store and warehouse, the latter to be 30 by 60, and the former 24 by 40 feet—an arrangement eminently calculated to facilitate the loading and unloading of merchandise. A new and capacious engine house has also been built, in which has been placed a powerful engine with three new boilers, which when put in working order will very materially enhance the efficiency of the mill in the manufacture of lumber. There are, moreover, other improvements in contemplation, which may be mentioned in a future number of this paper.
The mill is running on full time, employing, all told, about 100 men, and turns out, at a moderate estimate, 50,000 feet of lumber per day. Here we found the bark Caroline and a schooner taking in cargoes of lumber, the one for Valparaiso; the schooner Page was also loading with lumber. The scene was a busy one—laborers everywhere, in the mill and out of it, upon the wharves and upon lumber piles, loading vessels.
“The mill is running on full time, employing, all told, about 100 men, and turns out, at a moderate estimate, 50,000 feet of lumber per day.”
The Port Discovery mill is long gone, but the timber economy it represented reshaped Jefferson County and the Olympic Peninsula. The pitch—new wharves, bigger boilers, steady work—is recognizably the same argument communities still make when they chase port and resource jobs.
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