Crockett's Public House

Story of Hugh Crockett

Who was Hugh Crockett?

By Andy Anderson
Puyallup Historical Society
When we learned that a new restaurant in town is named for an early Puyallup resident about whom we knew next to nothing, we simply had to find out something about the gentleman. Owner Shaun Brobak of Crockett’s Public House told us that the legal description of his property was in Hugh Crockett’s addition to the city, and that Hugh had donated land on which to build an Episcopal Church in the mid-1880s. As Brobak put it: how bad can a man who does that be?

Hugh Crockett was indeed an early pioneer. Born in Virginia in 1829, he came out over the Oregon Trail in 1851 and settled in Coupeville on Whidbey Island. He took a donation land claim there next to several of his relatives, and lived there 25 years, marrying an Englishwoman in 1863, and becoming the first sheriff of Island County.

About 1875 he sold out, moved to Seattle and worked in a sawmill for two years before moving to Puyallup. He appears in the 1880 census as a hostler (hotel operator); historian Lori Price placed him in a hotel north of the tracks and east of Meridian. In 1877 he bought and farmed six acres of land, and Mrs. Crockett signed the paperwork adding the acreage to the town of Puyallup as Crockett’s addition on September 29th, 1886. After the building lots were sold, the couple moved about a mile out of town and farmed hops.

The Crocketts were both active in the Masonic Lodge and the International Order of Odd Fellows in Puyallup. Hugh died on March 26, 1900, aged 70 years, 6 months and five days, according to his tombstone in Woodbine Cemetery. He had no offspring, but 111 years later, he lives on in an attractive eating establishment that rightly honors an upstanding citizen.