The town dates back to 1853. In July of that year the 50-ton schooner Julius Pringle put out from San Francisco on a voyage of exploration to Puget Sound. The captain, one of the Talbots of Maine, whose shipping and lumbering interests reached across the continent, was seeking a mill site. Associated with him were two passengers, Cyrus Walker and A. J. Pope of East Machias, Maine. Talbot skirted the shores of Admiralty Inlet and Hood Canal and finally settled upon a deep bay backed by heavy forests. Port Gamble, as the bay had been named by the Wilkes expedition in 1841, satisfied all of Captain Talbot’s demands. Without delay, he sent a crew of ten men ashore with the necessary tools and provisions to construct a bunkhouse, cookshed, and store, and to fell and dress lumber for the projected sawmill. Thus the firm of Pope and Talbot sired its company town in the Far West; and today the stamp of Pope and Talbot is still on the community.

No absentee owners were the Popes and Talbots who came around Cape Horn to build an industry. Long lines of shade trees grown from Maine elm slips still mark the original main street, and bright flower gardens set off the severe houses, in New England style. For their employees the owners built rows of box houses with steep-pitched roofs; then they added a company store, a community hall, and a church; finally, they topped off this program with a large hotel. The barracks and cottages were a drab brown, the color of baked beans, and their yards are treeless and flowerless. A school, a hospital, apartment houses, a men’s boarding house, a store, and a service station completed the business structures of the town.

The mill closed in 1995 after 142 years of operation, it was the oldest continuously operating sawmill in the United States. Port Gamble, still a company town owned by Pope Resources, is listed as a National Historic Landmark, the highest honor bestowed on historic properties. Visit the Port Gamble Historic Museum to learn about the town’s history.