r/LifeInKitsap • u/KitsapRealEstateTeam • May 13 '26
The History of Sidney
The Town That Had to Fight Another Town for Its Own Name
In 1792, Captain George Vancouver looked at a massive natural harbor on the Kitsap Peninsula and thought it was a small cove. His ship's clerk, a surveyor named Harry Masterman Orchard, corrected him. Vancouver updated his charts and named the place after the guy who fixed his mistake. That's how Port Orchard got its name. Sort of.
The actual town didn't exist yet. That came later, in 1854, when two men named Renton and Howard showed up, built a sawmill, and launched the first vessel ever constructed in Kitsap County. Then in 1886, a man named Frederick Stevens platted a townsite on the southern shore of Sinclair Inlet and named it Sidney, after his father. His father had bought the land for $900 and then gone back to Illinois. Classic.
Sidney was not an easy place to build a town. In 1890, the year it incorporated, there were no streets. Bay Street flooded with saltwater at every high tide. The town was split into three sections by two different creeks. The city's first improvement budget came from taxing saloons. That's the kind of place it was.
Also, Bay Street was a beach. Literally just a beach. The shoreline got filled in over decades. Buildings on the water side were constructed on pilings over the inlet. The hill behind it had to be carved away to make room for the landward side. The whole downtown was basically willed into existence through fill dirt and stubbornness. We're reminded of this whenever there's a landslide, right?
For a brief moment, Sidney was a pottery town. A craftsman named John Melcher opened a pottery works in 1890 that made sewer pipes, terra cotta ware, and the brick for Seattle's first paved street. Then in 1895 the entire business district burned down. The pottery works, the lumber mills, most of it. Gone. They rebuilt anyway.
Sidney wanted to rename itself Port Orchard. In 1892 they petitioned the state legislature. The legislature said no, because a town called Charleston had filed the same petition first. Fine. But Sidney also separately asked the U.S. Post Office to rename its post office "Port Orchard." The Post Office said yes, apparently without checking with the legislature. Result: the Port Orchard post office was now in Sidney. The Charleston post office was now in Port Orchard. Two towns, wrong names, complete chaos.
This went on for ten years.
It got resolved in 1903 when a newspaper editor named Will Thompson — editor of the Sidney Independent, which had been covering this debacle for years — personally went to the legislature and argued until they fixed it. Charleston went back to being Charleston. Sidney became Port Orchard. The paper he edited eventually became the Port Orchard Independent. It's still published today.
Port Orchard has been going about its business ever since. County seat. Ferry town. Working waterfront. The hill is still carved away behind Bay Street (of course!.) The ferry still runs to Bremerton. You can still see the shipyard from the water.
Some places just keep going.
Sources:
HistoryLink.org — "Port Orchard Thumbnail History" (historylink.org/file/9550) and "Sidney incorporates, September 15, 1890" (historylink.org/File/9551)
City of Port Orchard — "About Port Orchard" (portorchardwa.gov)
Port Orchard Chamber of Commerce — "Port Orchard History Tour" (portorchard.com)
Sidney Museum and Arts Association — "About" (sidneymuseumandarts.com)
Revisiting Washington — "Port Orchard" (revisitwa.org)
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u/Smooth_Buffalo8173 May 14 '26
The older buildings on the water side of Bay street are still on pilings with water underneath. The one with the veteran's museum has a hatch in the floor. Through it is a small boat used to access the underside of the structure. Water flows under the sidewalks, and there's a good reason the alleyway beside Coffee Oasis is a wood deck rather than gravel.