“Kitsap Stories from 1889,” an exhibit celebrating Washington’s quasquicentennial or 125th year of statehood, will be on display at the Kitsap Historical Museum Nov. 7 through mid-January.

An open house takes place during Bremerton’s First Friday Art Walk from 5 to 8 p.m. with a special reception at 6 p.m.

The Kitsap County Board of Commissioners, sponsors of the event, and Kitsap County Auditor Walt Washington will be on hand to open the exhibit.

The public is invited to share in the rich stories, photos and artifacts of Kitsap County’s people and places in the 1889 during the period when Washington was establishing itself as the 42nd state in the Union.

The museum is located at 280 4th Street in downtown Bremerton. Refreshments will be served during the reception.

“Kitsap Stories” coincides with 125th anniversary celebrations all over the state. Looking back in time to the early 1880s, communities in Kitsap Country sprouted like mushrooms after the first fall rain, around lumber mills that fed bites of the great old-growth forests to California cities.

In January 1857, just 11 years after the land was ceded to the United States by the British, the Territorial Legislature in Olympia granted mill owners their own county, allowing them to conduct official business on site without having to row to Port Townsend or Seattle.

Named Slaughter County after an Army lieutenant, it was renamed Kitsap in July of that same year after a Suquamish military leader.

The county seat was established on Bainbridge Island but moved to Port Orchard (then called Sidney) in 1893.

By the time statehood finally came to Washington, the Kitsap Peninsula already had official post offices in small communities like Harper, Chico, and Point No Point. Immigrants from Asia and Scandinavia worked alongside Native Americans, developing commerce and trade through logging and fishing and creating sustainable communities with dairies, small farms, general stores and foot ferries.

Stories about the people who filed claims, attended Sunday Schools, and ran for public office will be told in this special exhibit alongside the other featured displays at the museum including “Arts and Crafts: Homemade in Kitsap,” “Sound People, Sound Visions,” representing different eras of economic development in Kitsap, and “Main Street,” a recreation of a Kitsap storefronts in the early 1900s.

The open house Nov. 7 is free and open to the public, including entrance to all museum exhibits.

For more information, call (360) 479-6226 or go to www.kitsaphistory.org.