Pysht is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

located on the

Olympic Peninsula The Olympic Peninsula is a large peninsula in Western Washington that lies across Puget Sound from Seattle, and contains Olympic National Park. It is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean, the north by the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the ...

Clallam County, Washington Clallam County is a county in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 77,155, with an estimated population of 77,616 in 2023. The county seat and largest city is Port Angeles; the county as a whole comprises th ...

, United States and is situated near the mouth the

Pysht River The Pysht River ( ) is a stream in the U.S. state of Washington. It originates near Ellis Mountain in the northern Olympic Mountains on the Olympic Peninsula and flows generally north, emptying into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The Pysht and nearb ...

History

The area was originally home to the

Klallam The Klallam (; also known as the S'Klallam or Clallam) are a Coast Salish people Indigenous to the northern Olympic Peninsula. The language of the Klallam is the Klallam language (), a language closely related to the North Straits Salish lang ...

village of Pysht, while European Americans arrived in the 1860s. Michigan-based Merrill and Ring was established in 1886 purchased several homesteads in the Pysht Valley to log the area, later setting up logging camps and a

company town A company town is a place where all or most of the stores and housing in the town are owned by the same company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, houses of worship, schoo ...

at Pysht. At its height, it housed 500 people and included a post office, company store, schoolhouse, hospital, electric plant, movie hall, and a port. A county road (now State Route 112) was completed in 1920. The original Klallam village was demolished in the 1920s by loggers seeking to build a lumber mill while its residents were working in other areas.Archived a
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Geography

The community lies on the

Strait of Juan de Fuca The Strait of Juan de Fuca (officially named Juan de Fuca Strait in Canada) is a body of water about long that is the Salish Sea's main outlet to the Pacific Ocean. The Canada–United States border, international boundary between Canada and the ...

near the mouth of the Pysht River, which flows southwest to northeast. The community is accessible via State Route 112. Directly east of the community is Pillar Point County Park.

References

Crabbing communities Unincorporated communities in Washington (state) Unincorporated communities in Clallam County, Washington {{ClallamCountyWA-geo-stub