The award-winning Bainbridge Island Historical Museum has pulled out some of its best visual treats for its new exhibit, “Port Blakely: A Portrait of a Mill Town.”
“Today’s casual visitor to Port Blakely would be astounded to learn that the quiet harbor was once the scene of a bustling maritime industrial complex that at one time laid claim to being the largest, highest producing, sawmill in the world,” said museum curator Rick Chandler.
Among the topics covered in the exhibition is the structural geology of southern Bainbridge, including a geomorphic map of the Toe Jam Hill fault.
Photos and a timeline trace the early indigenous peoples, explorers, timber harvesting and loggers. The exhibit documents how the massive trees were milled and then transported around the world by sailing ship. Mill workers came by vessels from all over the globe.
Captain William Renton’s original 1864 mill burned to the ground and was rebuilt twice. Chandler said that fact “makes the exhibit into a sort of three-act play.”
Several notable photographers documenting this era of growth and change are featured including William Hester, Carleton Watkins and Asahel Curtis.
Chandler said the museum owes some of the strongest images to the photographic talent of Tamegoro Takayoshi and Charles J. Lincoln. Takayoshi lived in the Japanese village of Yama where he photographed daily life.
Charles Lincoln — a distant relative of President Abraham Lincoln — left a legacy of some 950 glass plate negatives which are now housed at the museum. They have all been digitized and give us a brilliant glimpse into the Blakely lifestyle.
Featured are selections from his series of landscapes, buildings, boats, industrial scenes, pets and people. Museum visitors are also sure to enjoy his “Lincoln’s Ladies Collection” that features models, dancers, friends and relatives posing in the elaborate fashions of the era. The glass plate format has captured striking detail and there is a modern lifelike beauty preserved in these 100-year-old images.
The exhibit includes a diorama model of the mill and surrounding structures. A room-sized aerial view of contemporary Port Blakely covers the floor.
There are also photos and details of the Yama mill worker village archaeological site, which is being currently nominated to the Federal Register of Historic Places.
The film “Port Blakely: Memories of a Mill Town” is also part of a visitor’s experience.
The Bainbridge Island Historical Museum is at 215 Ericksen Ave. and is open every day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
For more information, call 206-842-2773 or visit www.bainbridgehistory.org.
