Puget Sound Naval Shipyard is a U.S Navy facility on 179 acres (72.4 ha) on the north shore of Sinclair Inlet at Bremerton, about 23 miles (37 km) northwest of Tacoma and 15 miles (24 km) west of Seattle, Washington. It is the Pacific Northwest’s largest naval shore facility providing maintenance and support, and employing 14,000 people. Sinclair Inlet is connected to Puget Sound by Rich Passage, and to Dyes Inlet by the Port Washington Narrows. It was named by U.S. Navy Captain Charles Wilkes for George T. Sinclair who was one of his ship’s masters.

The land now occupied by Bremerton is within the historical territory of the Suquamish people and was made available for non-Native settlement by the Treaty of Point Elliott of 1855. In 1888, the U.S. Navy 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, Seattle entrepreneur William Bremer and his business partner and brother-in-law, Henry Hensel, purchased the undeveloped land near Point Turner. In 1891, Navy Lieutenant Ambrose Barkley Wyckoff purchased approximately 190 acres (77 ha) of waterfront land on Sinclair Inlet from the Bremer family, and this land became part of the initial footprint of the Puget Sound Naval Yard.

During World War I, the shipyard constructed submarine chasers, submarines, minesweepers, tugboats, and ammunition ships. The yard’s primary effort during World War II was the repair of battle damaged ships. In the late 1950s, it entered an era of building guided missile frigates, and in 1965, the yard started maintaining nuclear-powered submarines. In 1990, the yard began decommissioning and recycling nuclear-powered ships. Read more here and here. Explore more of Puget Sound Naval Shipyard here: