The People, Places & Happenings of Poulsbo, Washington
As read in the papers of the day
In each edition, this section will page back exactly one hundred years and report what Poulsbo was up to — the small news, the advertisements, the ball games, the births. Our town is lucky here: it has had a paper of record for a very long time. The reading has begun, and while we work our way into the archives, here is the true picture of the town those hundred-year-old pages describe.
In August 1926, Poulsbo readers had the Kitsap County Herald, founded in 1901 by Peter Iverson — a Norwegian immigrant who published the paper for thirty-six years. By 1926 the Herald was a quarter century old and squarely in its prime. This section intends to be its faithful reader, a century behind schedule.
The Poulsbo of 1926 had been an incorporated city for just nineteen years — since December 18, 1907. The name was meant to be Paulsbo, after settler Iver Moe's home place in Norway, until officials in Washington, D.C. misread the handwriting on the paperwork. The mistake stuck, and the town has been explaining its spelling ever since.
A century ago there was no bridge and no highway worth the name: Poulsbo was connected to Seattle and the rest of the Sound by the little steamers of the mosquito fleet, which carried passengers, mail, and freight across the water. The commute existed — it just had a deck and a whistle.
In 1926, Norwegian was still the everyday language of much of the town — at the dinner table, at the dock, and in church — and it remained so until the Second World War. Little Norway was not a nickname yet. It was simply a description.
A century on, the steamers have become a bridge and a highway, and the Norwegian is mostly saved for festivals and grace before dinner. But the bay is the same bay, the berries still ripen in August, and the town still likes to read about itself — which is, after all, why you are here. If your family kept clippings, photographs, or stories from Poulsbo's early days, we would be honored to see them.
Have old photographs, clippings, or family stories from Poulsbo’s past? We would love to see them — and so would the town, a hundred years from now.