Grays Harbor County, Washington: History
The area that comprises modern-day Grays Harbor County is the ancestral territory of several indigenous Coast Salish peoples, including the Quinault and Lower Chehalis. They first came into contact with European explorers in the late 18th century and the tribes were later afflicted by regional epidemics. Grays Harbor was named for Boston fur trader and merchantman Robert Gray, who entered the bay on May 7, 1792. It was originally named Bullfinch Harbor and later Chehalis Bay before it was renamed for Gray. The first permanent white resident in the future county was William O'Leary, an Irish immigrant who settled on the south side of Grays Harbor in 1848.
The modern-day Washington Coast was originally part of the Oregon Country, which was administratively shared between the United States and British North America until the signing of the Oregon Treaty in 1846, which ceded it to the United States. The American Provisional Government of Oregon, which had been established prior to the treaty, created Lewis County on December 21, 1845. It encompassed most of the territory north of the Columbia River and west of the Cascade Mountains. The area around Grays Harbor remained part of Lewis County as it was transferred into the reorganized Oregon Territory in 1848 and later Washington Territory, created in 1853.
On April 14, 1854, the Washington Territorial Legislature created Chehalis County from portions of Lewis and Thurston counties that surrounded Grays Harbor. The first county seat was at Bruceport on Willapa Bay until a referendum in 1860 moved it to the homestead of the Scammon family in modern-day Montesano. The settlements of Aberdeen and Hoquiam were platted along the north side of Grays Harbor and incorporated by 1890. The cities had 80 percent of the county's population in 1900 and unsuccessfully attempted to move the county seat to one of their cities. A second plan to create a new county, named Grays Harbor, was approved by the Washington State Legislature but ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court on February 27, 1907.
The state legislature passed a bill to rename Chehalis County to Grays Harbor County on March 15, 1915. The name change, which took effect on June 9, eliminated confusion with the town of Chehalis in neighboring Lewis County.