File:Mill cottages along Bay Street in Port Blakely, ca 1900 (MOHAI 5456).jpg

English: In 1863, William Renton bought land on the Kitsap Peninsula, in Puget Sound, and began to build a sawmill at a new mill town which he named Port Blakely. By 1900, the Port Blakely Mill Company had grown to be one of the largest on Puget Sound, producing 120 million board feet of lumber per year. Workers lived near the mill, many in houses provided by the company. Port Blakely, like many area sawmill towns, looked like mill towns on the East Coast where the owners were from.

This photo shows a row of workers' cottages on wood-paved Bay Street in Port Blakely. The mill company built the houses in the early 1880s and added porches and decorative millwork sometime before 1900, when this photo was taken. Wooden spars for sailing ships lie in piles across the street, ready to be used at the Hall Brothers' shipyard (out of view, behind the photographer). Steam from the Port Blakely Mill rises in the distance.

• Subjects (LCTGM): Houses; Labor housing; Boat & ship industry; Port Blakely Mill Company