Material culture and the social dynamics of residential life at a company town: Archaeological investigations at the Fairfax Townsite (45PI918), Pierce County, Washington, USA

Fairfax, Washington (site 45PI918) was a thriving, company-owned coal mining and lumber town that operated between the late 1890s and 1941. Like most company towns in the western United States, the place was an isolated, ethnically diverse, and male-dominated settlement. Today it is a ghost town, but at its peak, Fairfax was shaped by paternalistic systems, the social dynamism of its residents, and their access to opportunity and material culture. Initial archaeological investigations at the site reflect the everyday lives of working people in a Western Washington industrial town. This thesis attempts to identify the ways in which these families connected to the material world and how concepts of community and division based on race, ethnicity, gender, and class are visible in the documentary record. At the intersection of these constructs lies a story previously untold about the people of Fairfax and what they left behind.