Mill Town Reshapes Itself for Tourism

PORT GAMBLE, Wash. — When the nation’s longest continuously running sawmill shut down here in 1995, some imagined that the death rattle of this quaint waterfront town couldn’t be far behind.

The lifeblood of Puget Sound’s last company town had flowed directly from the Pope & Talbot Co. mill. Every detail of the town--from its New England-style picket fences to its Victorian homes and steeple-topped churches--was built by Pope & Talbot for its employees.

“This place was just like a second home,” said Fran Johnson, 63, who spent 41 years with the mill. When it closed, Port Gamble’s days appeared numbered, he said.

But as Johnson and about 750 other former and current Pope & Talbot workers gathered recently for the company’s 150th anniversary, they toasted the old mill town’s brightening future.

Since the mill closed in 1995, Pope & Talbot spinoff Olympic Resource Management has paid the bills to keep the lights on in Port Gamble. The town’s 100 residents and few shops can’t sustain it alone, but ORM sees potential.

It envisions Port Gamble as a thriving tourist destination with retail shops, small hotels and perhaps a marina where the mill once stood--something like Virginia’s Colonial Williamsburg, or Mystic Seaport, Connecticut’s town-sized maritime museum.

In July, the Kitsap County Board of Commissioners gave its unanimous approval to reclassifying Port Gamble as a rural historic town.

Port Gamble “is practically a national treasure, but there’s no support for it,” said Peter Talbot Pope of Portland, Ore., the recently retired CEO of Pope & Talbot. Pope, 65, is a descendant of both the company’s founders.

Olympic Resource Management has been losing $200,000 to $300,000 a year on Port Gamble. An expansion and tourist traffic could reduce the loss.

“I think it’s going to be an awesome thing for the town,” said Shana Smith, curator of the town’s museum. “ . . . I think it’s the only way the town can survive.”

Andrew Jackson Pope and Frederic Talbot moved west from Maine in 1859 to start a lumber business to feed the demand of the Gold Rush. Four years later, they established the mill at Port Gamble. Hoping to attract skilled millworkers from New England, they built Port Gamble as a replica of their hometown of East Machias, Maine.

The look and feel have remained through Pope & Talbot’s boom years after World War II, when Port Gamble’s population reached 300, as well as its near demise during the Great Depression.

“Port Gamble will look and feel as it always has, but with some 20th century uses,” said Roberta Farris, vice president of corporate affairs for ORM.

Opponents fear any expansion will ruin Port Gamble. Some say the tourist season in the area is too short and its roads are too few to support a major attraction. Although Port Gamble is only about 21 miles northeast of Seattle, it typically takes more than two hours to reach by ferry.

At the 150th anniversary party, former Pope & Talbot employees felt they had stepped back in time to their former days at the mill. Some competed in chain-saw carving competitions, while others tried log-rolling or simply spent time catching up with old colleagues.

“A lot of guys came up this hill with tears in their eyes,” Johnson said. “I know I did.”