a Haida raiding party in revenge for the killing of a native chief during similar raids the year before. British authorities demurred on pursuing or attacking the northern tribes as they passed northward through British waters off Victoria, and Ebey's killers were never caught. The first school in the county went up in 1859, and the community took its present name in 1868. In 1966, the town of Port Gamble was designated a National Historic Landmark District. In 1985, Pope & Talbot, the successor company to Puget Mill, split into Pope & Talbot and Pope Resources, the latter of which took over the site and the sawmill. In 1995, the mill shut down after 142 years, ending the longest span of operation of any sawmill in the country. Founding In 1849, William Talbot and Andrew Pope arrived in San Francisco from East Machias, Maine, in hope of taking part in its shipping and lumber industry, for the shipping of lumber to the rapidly growing Western United States was becoming a very lucrative business. Pope and Talbot quickly realized that the lumber shipments from New England were not enough to meet the growing demand for building materials in the West. After hearing about the dense forests in the Oregon Territory, Talbot and Pope, along with partners Josiah Keller and Charles Foster, formed the Puget Mill Company to harvest the much-needed lumber for the expanding West. In the summer of 1853, Talbot, after searching the Puget Sound area for the best possible site for a mill, spotted a sand spit at the mouth of Gamble Bay as an excellent location, for it provided a location near the abundant trees of the Oregon Territory and a port for shipping the cut lumber to California. Soon after arriving, Keller sailed up the coast to join him with the boiler, engine, and muley saw for the mill. By September, the new mill was cutting logs into lumber. Although they had a ready and working mill, Pope, Keller, and Talbot had difficulty finding enough workers to run the mill. During the 1850s, the Pacific Northwest was frontier territory with little population. With the help of their partner in Maine, Charles Foster, the mill was able to recruit experienced mill workers from East Machias to come west to Gamble Bay. In their new and labor-intensive environment, workers quickly became homesick for the lifestyle they had left behind