Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Purdy, WA

Purdy is an unincorporated census-designated place in northern Pierce County, standing at the junction of Washington State Routes 16 and 302 just north of Gig Harbor, where it serves as the gateway to the Key Peninsula.

The community wraps around the head of Carr Inlet, where Burley Lagoon and Henderson Bay are separated by a narrow sandspit crossed by the Purdy Bridge.

Long before white settlement, Native Americans fished and clammed on Henderson Bay, and shellfish remain part of Purdy's identity: Japanese oysters and clams are still cultivated on its sandbars and in Burley Lagoon.

Purdy was founded in 1884, when logger and Civil War veteran Horace Knapp bought 19 acres from Isaac Hawk for $23.75 and subdivided the land into town lots and blocks.

The town took its name from Joseph W. Purdy, a Tacoma grocer who won the naming rights by donating the materials to build Purdy's first schoolhouse, on land donated by Knapp.

A sawmill built in 1885 made Purdy a rough "brawling mill town"; in 1886 the mill won a contract to supply huge beveled timbers for a wooden dry dock at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, underbidding rivals by using an extra saw to cut the bevel in fewer passes.

Around 1900, a cannery operator on the Purdy spit canned native Olympia oysters gathered from his land — a harvest so thorough that the native oysters were gathered nearly to extinction.

The 2020 census counted 1,668 residents in Purdy, up from 1,544 in 2010, while Census Bureau survey estimates for 2020–2024 put the community at roughly 664 households with a median age of about 66 years.

Peninsula High School now occupies the hilltop in Purdy where one of the community's original schoolhouses was built.

The Washington Corrections Center for Women, the state's women's prison, was originally named the Purdy Treatment Center and is still colloquially called "Purdy," even though it carries a Gig Harbor address.