New England in Pacific Northwest

The two times we've driven to the Olympic Peninsula, we've commented on a little town along the way. "It looks just like a New England village," we've said as we drove through. The end of March we had a meeting with someone in Hansville, at the tip of the Kitsap Peninsula. We resolved to stop in the small town on this trip.

To orient you - start on the right (east) side of the map. Kirkland, where we live, is about half way up. You can see Seattle across Lake Washington. We drove to Edmonds (about half way between the two logos for I-5) and took a ferry across Puget Sound to Kingston on the Kitsap Peninsula. We drove up to Hansville, just above the blue and white marker in the upper middle of the map, had our meeting and then went to Port Gamble, where the blue and white marker is. The Olympic Peninsula is to the west of the blue & white marker, across Hood Canal. 

This adventure involved a 30 minute ferry ride from Edmonds to Kingston. It was a very foggy and drizzly day. Normally you'd be able to see Puget Sound and the mountains. 

I thought it was fun that the GPS showed us on the water 

and told us to turn in 1.8 miles

 We stopped to explore the tiny town of Port Gamble. The reason it looks like a New England town is that it's a company town settled by men from Maine. They built a sawmill, company housing, and town here about 1850.  

We had lunch in a cafe in the General Store

downtown Port Gamble (about a block long)

The Port Gamble Historical Museum is in the basement of the General Store. The museum was great - very interesting - all about the lumber company that built the town and still owns the town. The sawmill part of the company went out of business in the 1990s but the company still owns all the land and buildings. 

 One of the rooms in the museum displayed family mementoes – just like the stuff that’s in the bins we’re going through. We could open our own museum! Click here for an interesting article about Port Gamble. 

We took these pictures from the car on our way out of town. Click on any of the images for a larger picture. 

 A little piece of New England here in the Pacific Northwest