; the two circular insets are titled "Iowa coming up the Sound" (upper) and "Torpedoboat Rowan" (lower). Bremerton is within the historical territory of the
Suquamish people. The land was made available for non-Native settlement by the
Treaty of Point Elliott of 1855. Bremerton was founded by German immigrant and real estate agent William Bremer in 1891. In that year, Navy Lieutenant Ambrose Barkley Wyckoff purchased approximately of waterfront land on Sinclair Inlet. This land was owned by the Bremer family. Three years earlier, a
U.S. Navy commission determined that Point Turner, between the protected waters of the Sinclair and Dyes inlets, would be the best site in the
Pacific Northwest on which to establish a shipyard. Recognizing the large number of workers such a facility would employ, Bremer and his business partner and brother-in-law, Henry Hensel, purchased the undeveloped land near Point Turner at the inflated price of $200 per acre. In April 1891, Bremer arranged for the sale of to the Navy at $50 per acre. This land became part of the initial footprint of the
Puget Sound Navy Yard.
1900–1930 Bremerton was incorporated on October 15, 1901, with Alvyn Croxton serving as the city's first mayor. Progress in the new city soon faced a major crisis, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy
Charles Darling moved all repair work to the
Mare Island Navy Yard in California in November 1902. Darling cited reports from commanders that the Bremerton waterfront was rife with
prostitution,
opium houses and frequent strongarmed robberies of sailors. Politics were probably also at play, as local newspapers reported that the city's incorporation left the shipyard essentially landlocked without room to expand. A dispute ensued between Mayor Croxton, who wanted to shutter all saloons in Bremerton, and three members of the city council, who attempted to block his efforts. Croxton eventually won out, and the council voted to revoke all
liquor licenses in June 1904. With the ban, Darling reestablished the navy yard as a port of call. Saloons had begun to return to business within two years, however. In 1908, the city library and Union High School were established to serve the educational needs of the 2,993 residents recorded in the 1910
U.S. census. During World War I,
submarine construction and the addition of a third
drydock caused the shipyard's workforce to balloon to over 4,000 employees. Growth due to the war effort and the 1918 annexation of the city of Manette, east of Bremerton on the
Port Washington Narrows, can be seen in the 1920 census, which reported a population of 8,918. Bremerton absorbed Charleston, its neighboring city to the south in 1927. The population reached 10,170 in 1930.
1930s and 1940s Manette was linked to Bremerton by the
Manette Bridge, a bridge constructed in June 1930. Prior to this time, the trip could only be made by ferry or a long trip around Dyes Inlet through
Chico,
Silverdale, and
Tracyton on mostly unimproved roads. This wooden bridge was replaced with a concrete and steel structure in October 1949. It was replaced by the new Manette Bridge in 2011. At the shipyard, the Hammerhead Crane No. 28 was completed in April 1933. One of the nation's largest, it is capable of lifting 250 tons and continues to dominate the Bremerton skyline. At the peak of
World War II, the Bremerton area was home to an estimated 80,000 residents due to the heavy workload of shipbuilding, repair and maintenance required for the Pacific war effort. Most of the relocation was temporary, though, and only 27,678 citizens were left in the city by 1950. During the 1940s, presidents
Franklin D. Roosevelt and
Harry S. Truman both visited Bremerton. Roosevelt made a campaign stop at the
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard on August 12, 1944, giving a national radio address in front of a backdrop of civilian workers. During the course of his 35-minute speech, it is believed the president suffered an
angina attack, experiencing severe chest and shoulder pain. An
electrocardiogram was immediately administered once he left the podium, but it showed nothing abnormal. President Truman took a two-day tour of Washington state in 1948, speaking from the balcony of the
Elks Club on the morning of June 10. Local legend has it that a man in the large Pacific Avenue crowd yelled the infamous "Give 'em hell, Harry!" line for the first time. This is a matter of dispute, however, as local newspapers quoted the man as having shouted "Lay it on, Harry!" Despite this, there is a bronze plaque attached to the corner of the building declaring that spot to be the place where the phrase "Give 'em hell, Harry" was first uttered. With the return of World War II soldiers, the need for post-secondary education became evident to officials of the Bremerton School District. Olympic Junior College (now
Olympic College), a two-year institution, opened its doors to 575 students in the fall of 1946. Initially, it operated in the former Lincoln School building, gradually moving operations to World War II–surplus
Quonset buildings at its current 16th & Chester site. About 100 students received
associate degrees at the first commencement exercises held June 10, 1948. President Truman was in attendance and received the college's first
honorary degree. Operation of the college transferred from the school district to the state of
Washington in 1967.
1950–1970 A second high school opened in 1956, and two comprehensive high schools operated in the city until 1978. Growth in East Bremerton necessitated the construction of another span across the Port Washington Narrows in 1958. The $5.3 million, four-lane Warren Avenue Bridge allowed for increased traffic on State Highway 21-B (now
State Route 303). The battleship
USS Missouri, site of the Japanese surrender treaty signing that ended World War II, was assigned to the
Pacific Reserve Fleet at PSNS in 1955. For 30 years, she served as the city's primary tourist attraction. Hundreds of thousands of visitors walked the "surrender deck" before the ship was recommissioned in 1985. She was decommissioned on March 31, 1992 (final), and her name was struck off the register on January 12, 1995. In 1998 "Mighty Mo" was donated to the USS
Missouri Memorial Association and became a museum ship at
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Population growth was flat, with 26,681 enumerated in the 1960 census, leading Bremerton leaders to annex the shipyard the following year in an effort to include stationed sailors in those figures. While the
Vietnam War spawned protests and sit-ins on the Olympic College campus, the city was relatively free of civil disorder during the 1960s.
1970s With the 1973 selection of the
Bangor Ammunition Depot northwest of Bremerton as the Pacific home of the new
Trident submarine fleet, residential and commercial development began to move north, closer to
Silverdale, and farther from the Bremerton downtown core. Numerous failed proposals were made at redevelopment beginning in the early 1970s, including discussions of a waterfront hotel and the erection of a large canopy over the central business district. Meanwhile, most of the city's office and retail space remained in the control of Edward Bremer, son of William Bremer and the sole remaining heir to his wealth. Bremer began to neglect his properties, never increasing decades-old lease rates and failing to make necessary maintenance upgrades. In 1978, the Bremerton City Council passed an ordinance declaring the entire downtown a "blighted area".
1980s In 1985,
Safeco subsidiary Winmar Corporation developed the
Kitsap Mall in Silverdale. With lower taxes and minimal planning regulations in the unincorporated town, Silverdale achieved virtually unfettered growth.
Sears,
J.C. Penney,
Montgomery Ward,
Nordstrom Place Two,
Woolworth and
Rite Aid all closed their downtown Bremerton stores in the 1980s and 1990s. Upon the death of Edward Bremer in 1987, the Bremer properties were placed under the complete control of a trust held by Olympic College. Not being in the real-estate business, the college did not actively market its holdings, and the downtown was composed almost entirely of very large empty storefronts. , many buildings remained vacant.
1990–present Despite a hard-fought battle throughout the mid-1990s by local politicians to have the decommissioned and mothballed USS
Missouri, already in the Bremerton Navy Yard, stay in Bremerton as a museum ship and tourist attraction, Secretary of the Navy
John H. Dalton awarded the ship to the
Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Hawaii, in 1998. It now sits near the
USS Arizona Memorial to demonstrate where U.S. involvement in World War II started on December 7, 1941, and where it ended by the signing of the
instrument of surrender by the Japanese on board the USS
Missouri, on September 2, 1945. Beginning with the building of a waterfront boardwalk and marina in 1992, Bremerton had begun the process of revitalizing its downtown community. That same year, the Bremerton Historic Ships Association opened the destroyer to public tours at the end of the boardwalk; the ship was built in the Puget Sound area in 1958, commissioned in 1959, and had played a back-up role in the 1964
Gulf of Tonkin incident that further escalated U.S. involvement in the
Vietnam War with the Congressional passage of the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, allowing President
Lyndon B. Johnson to send fighting troops in addition to the "advisors" already on the ground in Vietnam. In 2000, Bremerton saw the opening of the waterfront multimodal bus/ferry terminal and a hotel/conference center complex in 2004. The high-rise
Norm Dicks Government Center also opened that year, housing City Hall and other government offices. The Waterfront Fountain Park and Naval History Museum adjacent to the Bremerton Bus/Ferry Terminal opened in 2007, and a newly expanded marina with more boat capacity was completed in 2008. Plans to build an extension to the current boardwalk from the USS
Turner Joy to Evergreen Park is in the litigation stage. Even though the boardwalk extension project is fully funded, opposition to the extension by the Suquamish Tribe concerning the impact to treaty fishing rights threatens the project. Fairfield Inn and Suites by Marriott, a 132-room hotel, opened in March 2010 on the site of the old City Hall building made obsolete by the new Norm Dicks Government Building. Condominiums were built on the waterfront to lure more people to live and shop in the downtown area as part of the revitalization effort. However, construction delays and economic downturn forced the builder of the publicly funded Harborside Condominium complex, the Kitsap County Consolidated Housing Authority, to fall $40.5 million in debt. That debt later was taken on by Kitsap County, which hired a marketing firm to sell the remaining units at a lower-than-anticipated price. The privately built 400-condominium complex north of the Harborside complex opened shortly before the Harborside complex and also did not sell as well as projected. The remaining empty condos were eventually sold at auction for a lower cost. The Harborside Fountain Park opened on May 5, 2007. Located on the waterfront just steps away from the Kitsap Conference Center, the park features five large copper-ringed fountains, wading pools, and lush landscaping. The park will also be home to the Harborside Heritage Naval Museum. A tunnel underneath downtown, traversing from the ferry terminal to State Route 304 (Burwell Street), was opened to funnel traffic from the car ferry away from downtown streets. A new fountain park above the tunnel blends water and art, along with the bow of a ship and the
conning tower of a submarine as a tribute to the workers at the Bremerton Naval Shipyard over the years. The stations along the walk include pictures of the shipyard, workers, and shipbuilding and repair statistics. ==Geography==