Grays Harbor, 1885-1913

Description

In the 1890s Grays Harbor—a chink in the forbidding Pacific Northwest coastline—was an undeveloped, rugged wilderness. There, each year, slate-colored skies poured down more than a hundred inches of rain upon a scene of mammoth trees, of waters teeming with fish, of hills and valleys bristling with primeval life. For the vigorous pioneers who migrated to this isolated, sea-fronted area of southwest Washington, life was tough and turbulent. By the end of the century, the endurance, courage, and hard labor of the eager settlers-homesteaders, loggers, mill hands, small businessmen, sailors, prostitutes-had transformed Grays Harbor country into a major logging and shipbuilding center, a famous seaport, and a sailor’s haven lurid enough to rival San Francisco’s Barbary Coast. All this rich, earthy, now-forgotten life was recorded in photographs by Charles Pratsch, the son of a local hotelkeeper, and several other photographers of the day. These extraordinary visual documents were miraculously preserved through the years on glass plates and only recently rescued from neglect and oblivion. Robert A. Weinstein, expert in historical and maritime photography, has provided a fascinating commentary, enlarging our appreciation of the rough-and-ready lives of our forebears at the turn of the century.