The Masonic Temple in Port Angeles was constructed by members of the Puget Sound Cooperative Colony in 1921 using the Classical Revival style. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. It is still in use today as a Masonic Lodge and also hosts many other events. Stick around if you like on a Wednesday evening for a rousing session of Bingo.
In the late 1800s, Port Angeles was chosen as the site of the Puget Sound Cooperative Colony, the first of a number of utopian communities that sprang up in Washington over the next 30 years. Hundreds of colonists arrived in 1887. The Puget Sound Cooperative Colony did not last long, however. But it attracted many settlers to Port Angeles. Colonists built the area's first sawmill, first office building, homes, schools, churches, and an ornate Opera House, a long-time center of civic life, but sadly no longer standing.
A year after statehood, in 1890, residents of Port Angeles and Port Crescent, two booming towns that expected railroads to arrive at any moment, engineered an election to move the county seat from New Dungeness to Port. Despite, or to some extent because of, its success in attracting adherents, the Puget Sound Co-operative Colony did not last long as an experiment in collective living.
