Gray Harbor is loosely based on the town of Aberdeen, Washington. In keeping with our Suspension of Disbelief philosophy, we decided to give it a fake name and fake history, but it sits in roughly the same geographical area. As such, some of the info below was scraped from the Wikipedia's entry on Aberdeen.

Quick Facts

• Location: Washington State coastline, about 100 miles southwest of downtown Seattle
• Population: Approximately 18,000 people
• Average Household Income: $40,000
• Nearest Neighboring Cities: Hoquiam and Junction City

Gray Harbor is a mid-sized city located along the western coast of Washington state. Previously a prime location for logging, it has spent the last half-century sliding deeper and deeper into economic depression. A single sawmill remains in the city, providing employment for a few hundred blue-collar workers. There is also a decent availability for seasonal work, as the region sees a swell in tourist population during the summer months - though Gray Harbor itself does not receive the benefits of tourism as much as its neighboring towns do.

In addition to the sawmill, many residents of Gray Harbor are employed at Olympic National Forest, located about 30 miles north of the City.

History

"Home is the place where when you go there, you have to finally face the thing in the dark." - Stephen King, It

Gray Harbor was given its name because of the mist that tends to haunt the bay throughout the year, sweeping up into the surrounding evergreen forest. Originally founded by the Baxter family in 1884, the land around the town was quickly bought by the Addington family, who now claim the title of founding citizens, pushing the Baxters out to the surrounding region and eventually away from the town entirely. The town was incorporated on June 2, 1890.

The city's real industry was logging, with the first sawmill built in 1885 by the Addingtons, successfully usurping what had been prime business in neighboring Hoquiam. When the Northern Pacific Railroad was looking for its terminus, Gray Harbor vied to take the position, but it ultimately went on to terminate in Ocosta. Fearing the lack of railroad would damage business, the Addingtons built a spur to the city, connecting it to the line in 1895, and securing Gray Harbor as a critical city for the logging industry.

By 1900, with the success of the sawmill, Gray Harbor had bloomed into a thriving community with saloons, whorehouses, and gambling establishments to keep the loggers busy. It became known as "The Hellhole of the Pacific" and "The Port of Missing Men," owing to an uncommonly high murder rate. One notable resident was Billy Gohl, known locally as Billy "Ghoul", who was rumored to have killed at least 140 men. Gohl was ultimately convicted of two murders.

Gray Harbor was hit hard during the Great Depression, which saw the number of major local sawmills reduce from 37 to 9. Although timber continued to be the primary source of the city's economy for the next 40 years, the area was eventually unable to sustain the logging industry, and all but the Addington Sawmill closed in the 1970s.

The town slipped into obscurity, rising briefly to prominence again in the early 1990s as a hot-bed of grunge music, being proximate to Seattle but significantly less expensive. This was a flash in the pan, though, and the town stayed economically depressed throughout the '90s, '00s, and into the 2010s.

The Internet and Social Media

Although Gray Harbor exists in the modern world, its happenings aren't particularly notable in social media except as Yet Another Small Town in America. Posts about strange events are mysteriously downvoted into non-existence or get deleted. Images of anything non-mundane don't upload or are scrambled. From the outside, it's just another average place on the West Coast of the US. Use of the local site Friendzone is almost on par with Facebook, and just as likely to see shares, upvotes, and reblogs. ...as long as it's a mundane post, that is.

Many local businesses have web presences, but they never get promoted to the front page of Google. If you happen to search for one specifically by name, with quotes, it'll come up...maybe.

Geography

Gray Harbor is at the easternmost edge of the bay with the same name, near the mouth of the Chehalis River and southwest of the Olympic Mountains. The water in the harbor is warmer than the rest of the Pacific, and the surrounding towns see an influx in tourists over the summer months - though Gray Harbor itself has always been unable to cash in on the tourism industry as well as its neighbors. Gray Harbor is notable as the northernmost ria on North America's Pacific Coast because it has remained free of glaciers throughout the Quaternary due to unfavorable topography and warm temperatures. It is thought that, during glacial periods of the Quaternary, the Chehalis River was a major refugium for aquatic species, as was the west coast from the Olympic Peninsula southward for plants that later formed the northern part of the Pacific temperate rainforest in formerly glaciated areas.

Aside from the western side of town which is dominated by the bay, Gray Harbor is mostly surrounded by forest. The woods have had many names over the years, none of them delightful, but they were rebranded the 'Firefly Forest' in the early 1950s in an effort to drive tourism to the town. The tourists didn't come, but the name stuck, mostly because it sounded way better than its previous name, the Hangman Woods.

Gray Harbor itself is a quaint town, with a small downtown that branches into several different neighborhoods. To the north lies Addington Park, with the hospital and the school buildings adjacent to that. To the south, the industrial plaza, where the new-and-improved sawmill now lives. To the west are businesses, and to the southeast is the less desirable part of town which features Huckleberry Mobile Park.

Just to the west of Gray Harbor is the town of Hoquiam - of equal size. Hoquiam employs more dock-workers than Gray Harbor does, and has a slightly higher annual income average as a result of this. Southeast, across the Chehalis River, is the town of Junction City. Slightly smaller than Gray Harbor, Junction City butts against a large wildlife refuge.

Map

Climate

With the warmth of the bay and the Pacific Ocean to the west, Gray Harbor experiences a climate that leans oceanic. Winters are generally mild with periodic snowfall, though there was a bizarre blizzard in 1964 where the region experienced fifty-two inches over a three day period. High rain and snow from October through April often cause the sewers to overload and flooding to occur in the lower (downhill) parts of town.

On a rather regular basis, a mist is known to settle across the bay and sweep into the surrounding forests. It lingers through the morning and into the afternoon, though it tends to clear shortly after. There are several recorded incidents of the mist staying until dawn of the next day and the town experiencing several subsequent days of sunshine after. Strangely, this phenomena seems to occur most frequently on Mondays and were recorded to have happened in 1885, 1890, 1910 (on the day Billy Gohl was arrested), 1930, 1957, 1992, and 2010, and most recently on June 4, 2018.

Additional Pages

Thank you to Aidan's player for the awesome "Welcome to Gray Harbor" image used here and on the front-page of the web.