1 Tank / 1 Trip: Port Gamble surges with new energy

EDITOR'S NOTE: With gas prices in the stratosphere, we're looking for excursions that will keep the summer fun rolling, but not break the bank. Today, the P-I launches a new feature aimed at short trips around the Puget Sound that can be taken on one tankful or less in a typical family car.

PORT GAMBLE -- On a typical day, some 6,500 cars breeze by this historic mill town on their way to the Hood Canal Bridge, not realizing they're passing up one of the prettiest, best-preserved little main streets in Western Washington.

If you haven't parked and poked around in the past few years -- or ever -- now is a great time to visit, because Port Gamble is enjoying a renaissance.

Ten years after losing its lumber mill -- its very reason for existence -- the pristine town is reinventing itself, with owner-occupied retail shops, spruced-up details such as picket fences and flowerbeds, weekend festivals and big plans for the future.

"Where in Washington do you go and find something this well-kept and preserved? It's wonderful," said Mike Flanagan of Snohomish, ambling down the tree-lined street toward the Port Gamble General Store and Cafe.

The town holds special meaning for his mother, Pat Flanagan, 76, who was visiting that day with her children and their spouses.

"I was born here in the hospital that used to be here," she said. "We come back here every year to see where I was born. They've kept it so nice. It's just a lovely little place to visit. When I come back here, it's like coming home."

Port Gamble is known as one of the few surviving examples of a 19th-century company town. Founded in 1853, it was the creation of timber entrepreneurs William Talbot and Andrew Pope, who saw a chance to make a fortune supplying lumber to San Francisco during the building boom set off by the California Gold Rush.

With its peak-roofed houses and canopy of maples and elms, the town grew up to resemble East Machias, Maine, birthplace of the company founders and the workers they recruited. One of the town's most familiar landmarks, St. Paul's Episcopal Church, is a replica of East Machias' own First Congregational Church.

Today the church does a brisk business as a wedding venue, along with the Hood Canal Vista Pavilion at the other end of the little town.

"My kids gave us our 50th wedding anniversary up there in the church yard," said Joyce Olson, a Kitsap visitor-center volunteer who lived in the mill town from 1955 through much of the 1990s. "My husband was the tugboat skipper here. His family lived here before that. His dad was born here. If you lived here, you worked at the mill."

Today Port Gamble is a 120-acre National Historic Landmark with about 85 residents -- well below the 500 who lived here from the 1920s through 1940s, when many more houses were still standing. But big plans are afoot.

Olympic Property Group, the real-estate arm of the town's owner, Pope Resources, has been talking with the community about how to grow Port Gamble into an economically viable development without destroying the town's unique character.

In time, Port Gamble may include a destination nursery, a marina, environmental education programs, historically compatible housing in the surrounding 4,000 acres of woods and a period-style replacement for the old Puget Hotel that once sat on the bluff.

Those changes are years away, said Olympic president Jon Rose, acknowledging the angst that arises at any talk of growth in the beloved town. The question he hears most often is, "Are you going to wreck it?"

He insists the answer is no -- that Port Gamble's landmark charm is its biggest economic asset. But he also reminds people that in its heyday, Port Gamble was a much larger, busier town.

"Historically, the place had ships and doctors and barbers and kids and Native Americans. It was a hub," Rose said. "We absolutely want to bring that sense of vibrancy back. It's not a museum."

Already, the town has rebounded from the doldrums of November 1995, when Pope shut down North America's oldest, continuously operating lumber mill. For awhile, Port Gamble had a sad air, its workers gone, its quaint houses rented out to strangers.

Visit today and you'll find that the landmark houses along the main street, tiny Rainier Avenue, have been spruced up and turned into a retail district. Residents operate shops downstairs and live upstairs.

Brightly painted wooden signs summarize the history of each house. Note that the Daniel B. Jackson House, now The Spa at Port Gamble, was home to a forebear of former Sen. Dan Evans.

Rose said the retailers have been carefully chosen to reflect Port Gamble's emerging identity as a "day-trip destination for women." Some, such as the spa and the Rugosa-Rosa flower and gift shop, also make money from the town's wedding trade.

Ms. Bee Haven, one of Port Gamble's two antiques stores, sits below the twin water towers in the old meat and produce market, a barrel-roofed building that later became a garage.

The shop is a dark, cozy warren stuffed to the gills with patinaed wooden chests, hanging quilts and unusual bric-a-brac, pictures and utilitarian objects.

On the day of our visit, the owner's husband, Michel Robin, was minding the store. Ensconced in a floral armchair near the flames of a gas-fired stove, Robin (pronounced Row-BAN) was completing an intricate pen-and-ink drawing of an ancient, twisted tree. Slight of build, with a white beard, kindly eyes and soft French accent, he lent the shop a romantic, otherworldly air.

Across the street, Best Friends Antiques occupies the Morrill Pope House, which was barged from nearby Port Ludlow around 1929. You'll recognize it by its fan-shaped front porch hung with vintage bunting.

Shop owner Sheila Walters, a former teacher, said she aims for a varied inventory that includes lots of lower-priced items for visitors who want an economical memento. (We couldn't resist a not-so-old logging-road sign for $20, a souvenir of the town's working heritage.)

After all this browsing, your growling stomach may be shouting "Feed me!" No heavy decisions here -- the town has only a couple of places for lunch.

The Port Gamble General Store and Cafe serves soup, salads, sandwiches, a daily lunch buffet (pork roast, green beans and potatoes au gratin the day we were there), homemade pie and a dozen ice-cream flavors, including the exotic-sounding "black licorice."

Prices are reasonable ($3.50 for chili and cornbread, $5.95 for a chef salad, $7.45 for the lunch buffet), and the atmosphere is laid-back. Instead of piped-in music, the cafe features the vocal stylings of Mr. B.C., a Brotogeris parakeet that sits on the shoulder of general-store owner Pat Wright.

For day-tripping ladies, the place to go is The Tea Room at Port Gamble, situated in a sunny, yellow house with potted pink flowers. The decor is appropriately frou-frou, with lace curtains, crisp linen tablecloths and delicate china cups.

You can order a la carte -- be sure to try the Mayan hot chocolate spiced with habanero pepper -- or go for one of the two full-service teas: the breakfast tea ($17.95) or the chocolate tea ($18.95).

Both include delicious scones with clotted cream and fresh strawberry preserves. Regardless of which "tea" you choose, the food is fresh, hearty and abundant. One order will fill two people.

Before your time runs out, be sure to visit the Port Gamble Historical Museum for a sense of the town's beginnings.

Other must-sees include the Of Sea and Shore shell display on the general-store mezzanine and the Buena Vista cemetery, where gently tilting, 19th-century headstones rest peacefully under spreading maples.

"They have faded from earth, like stars from on high," reads one poignant, double headstone of two lost children of the late 1800s.

Weekend events include an antiques market, a Sunday food and craft market and periodic festivals and arts fairs that draw thousands of visitors.

One of these days, maybe you'll be among them. If so, you'll get a chance to savor what Wright, the general-store owner, justly describes as "one of the best-kept secrets in Washington state."

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