He named it Bulfinch Harbor in honor of Charles Bulfinch, one of the Columbia's owners in Boston. The Chehalis's first contact with white Americans came in May 1792, when Robert Gray brought the Columbia into the harbor. In the warmer months, they traveled to village and camping sites in the mountains for gathering plants and berries, harvesting trees for canoes and other items, and hunting. Bands of the Salish-speaking communities moved between a number of village sites near the saltwater where they gathered shellfish, fished for salmon and sturgeon, and hunted otter and other sea mammals. More recently extractive industries have declined and tourism and commercial retail have increased.įor thousands of years the Lower Chehalis have lived around Grays Harbor and in the river valleys that feed into the bay. Lumber, fisheries, and shipbuilding have fueled the local economy for much of the region’s history. During the latter half of the nineteenth century a number of small communities were established on Grays Harbor, but Aberdeen quickly grew to dominate as the commercial and cultural hub. The region’s rich fisheries and abundant timber supported a number of Native American communities and served to attract white American settlement in the mid-nineteenth century.

Aberdeen is located at the confluence of the Chehalis and Wishkah rivers at the head of Grays Harbor, at the southern end of the Olympic Peninsula.

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