The area was originally home to the Klallam village of Pysht, while European Americans arrived in the 1860s. Michigan-based Merrill and Ring was established in 1886 purchased several homesteads in the Pysht Valley to log the area, later setting up logging camps and a company town at Pysht. At its height, it housed 500 people and included a post office, company store, schoolhouse, hospital, electric plant, movie hall, and a port.[1] A county road (now State Route 112) was completed in 1920.[2] The original Klallam village was demolished in the 1920s by loggers seeking to build a lumber mill while its residents were working in other areas.[3][4]