By Cindy Jones
The town we now know as Winslow was first named Madrone by settlers in the 1800s. By the end of that century, a group of brothers had made a pretty big splash in the area. They were the Hall brothers—Isaac, Winslow and Henry—and their claim to fame was the prolific number of ships built at their shipyard in Blakely Harbor.
Over the course of 23 years, the brothers’ operation built 78 ships, from small wooden sailing ships to steam-driven vessels, but their crowning achievement was their magnificent schooners. They built 40 massive four-masted schooners, and, even more amazingly, they produced truly huge five-masted schooners.
By the early 1900s, things were getting crowded at the shipyard. The group of brothers, however, had thinned out significantly. Isaac died in 1879 and Winslow in 1898, leaving Henry to keep the operations afloat. He turned his sights to Eagle Harbor which, he noted, had “plenty of room to grow and not be cramped.”
The people of Madrone saw good things coming, and in 1902, in honor of one of the late Hall brothers and the expected business boom to come, the town renamed itself Winslow.
