The Liveliest Town of Puget Sound Virtual Cache

Parking area is along the chainlink fence and you are able to walk to all the spots easly. 

DO NOT  park along the fence area along the Seabeck Bay that faces the marina and next to the coffee shop, this is ONLY marina parking.

****************************************************************************************

Seabeck's first seattlers were from Maine. They settled on the little bay called by the Indians L-Ks-bsk-hu. They named the place after one of the towns they had come from which there was pronounced Saybock. 

A mill of considerable capacity, for its time, began to be built in the fall of 1856 and in July 1857 they began to cut timber and manufacture lumber. The boilers and machinery for this mill  were bought at second hand in San Francisco for $20,000. 

The company owning the mill was composed of Wm. J Adams, Marshal (sic) Blinn of San Francisco and Hillman Harmon and W. B. Sinclair of the Sound. 

This was the fourth lumber town to be established in Kitsap County (formly Slaughter County per 1857 Census). It was rather isolated in the territorial days. Township 25 N Range 1 West, was one of the first Government surveys made in this part of Washigton Terriotory. 

In 1858 the Territorial Legislature passed an act to located a Territorial road or trail to Seabeck. By 1861 a trail was located and viewed out from Seabeck to the head of Hood Canal. In 1862 a law intstructed the Board of County Commissioners to establish a territorial road from the head of Port Orchard Bay to intersect the road to Seabeck. 

A modern mill and good location helped Seabeck grow. A second mill was added as the demand for Northwest lumber grew. Seabeck lumber was shipped around the world. The Company had to build their own shipyard to have enough vessels to accommodate their output. Over two dozen ships were built here including the Olympus, the largest single-decked sailing ship ever built. The company store supplied the residents with all their needs. Families lived in company-owned houses. Soon the town found that they needed things like a school as well as a cemetery. Ships left the quiet harbor loaded with lumber and returned with people, goods, and news from the outside world. The Company spent over a year hauling sawdust and moving dirt to create a level place large enough for a baseball field to play against teams from other mill towns. Blinn's desire that his town remains free of alcohol and sin turned out to be wishful thinking.

By 1877, Seabeck was much larger than Seattle. It boasted a population of 400 people along with four saloons, two hotels, two stores, a church, a little red school house and a five-acre cemetery. In the lobby of the Historic Inn, once the United States Hotel (know the Seabeck Conference Grounds), hangs a wooden grave marker. The epitaph tells us only that Hiram Bryant was "Aged about 47 years old" and was "killed in a dispute." An insight to Seabeck's frontier heritage.

On August 12, 1886, the steamer Retriever sent a spark onto a pile of lumber. Soon the entire pier was ablaze. Up in the same smoke as the lumber mills went the future of Seabeck as an industrial center. The fire was so hot it cooked the apples on the trees in the orchard.  The fire  consumed everything except the store and the cookhouse with the dining room adjoining. Without the mill to provide jobs the population scattered to other mill towns and Seabeck became a near ghost town within a month and remained that way for almost thirty years.

When you look across the lagoon (body of water between road and Conference grounds), you will see the Seabeck Conference Grounds which held many of the buildings for the mill. It had the United States hotel which operated until 1869 when it was torn down and the present inn was built  and named The Eagle Hotel.  Today, it is the office, dining hall, and rooms.  

This information came from the Seabeck Tide's out. Tables' Set book by Fredi Perry.