Broodmare /Western Potential

The Port Gardner peninsula was originally inhabited by local Coast Salish tribes, including the Snohomish, who maintained a winter village at Hibulb (also called Hebolb) at the mouth of the Snohomish River. The area was explored by the Vancouver Expedition of 1792, which landed on a beach on the modern Everett waterfront on June 4 and claimed the land for England. The Snohomish and other tribes signed the Treaty of Point Elliott in 1855, relocating to the nearby Tulalip Indian Reservation and relinquishing its lands to the territorial government, opening the region to American settlement. The first permanent American settler to arrive on the peninsula was Dennis Brigham, a carpenter from Worcester, Massachusetts, who claimed a 160-acre (0.6 km 2) homestead on Port Gardner Bay in 1861 and built a cabin for himself. He was joined by several other families on their own homesteads, which included the establishment of a general store and a sawmill that quickly went out of business.