ABERDEEN, Wash. — You can look it up: The broad Washington estuary known as Grays Harbor was once a great shipbuilding center.

“Most of the five- and six-masted vessels that sailed the world were built right here,” said Dann Sears, the director of the Aberdeen Museum of History.

Toward the end of the 19th century, locally milled spruce and hemlock were in high demand for wooden ships. The tall, straight trees — nurtured by coastal forests — were ideal for masts, spars and hulls. And as the age of sails gave way to steam, tugboats and steamships were also manufactured here. Through World War II, they crowded the docks of the adjacent harbor towns of Aberdeen and Hoquiam.

The days of shipbuilding have passed, although fiberglass-hulled yachts and other small craft are still produced here. But don’t be surprised to see a tall ship or two on the waters of the bay.

Grays Harbor is the home port of the Lady Washington and the Hawaiian Chieftain, replicas of ships afloat in the seas circa 1800.

To reach the harbor — 83 miles southwest of Seattle and just over 300 miles from Bend — Central Oregonians can take U.S. Highways 20 or 26 over the Cascades to pick up northbound Interstate 5. After exiting I-5 westbound on U.S. Highway 12, six miles north of Centralia and about 90 miles north of Portland, it’s a 47-mile drive to Aberdeen.

In 1792, explorer Robert Gray sailed aboard the sloop Lady Washington when he discovered the bay that bears his name, and soon thereafter, the mouth of the Columbia River. The Lady was the first American vessel to travel around Cape Horn to the West Coast, and it pioneered U.S. trade with the Orient. The full-scale reproduction, now a twin-masted, square-rigged schooner, was built in 1989; it has appeared in such movies as “Star Trek: Generations” and “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

The slightly smaller Hawaiian Chieftain, also twin-masted, was launched in Lahaina, Hawaii, in 1988 but also calls Grays Harbor its home. Both ships are presently sailing together in the Columbia River, but they’ll return by July 4 to anchor at the mouth of the Chehalis and Wishkah rivers. Here they welcome visitors for short cruises around the bay.

Aberdeen-Hoquiam

Grays Harbor Historical Seaport provides the infrastructure for these two tall ships, which sail from San Diego to Skagway, Alaska, providing shipboard education programs for youths and the general public. Although both ships visit other ports far more frequently than they rest dockside in Grays Harbor, the Seaport Learning Center — on a 214-acre site just east of Aberdeen — offers year-round courses in marine trades (including navigation, sailmaking and tall-mast ropes). The seaport also has a warehouse-size spar shop with a massive tracer lathe that can turn masts up to 122 feet long.

In the works is a new interpretive center beside the bay, in south Aberdeen’s Star Corner District. Funds are being raised for a year-round educational facility that will be a permanent home for the two tall ships and five longboats from the same era.

But visitors shouldn’t expect the adjacent Aberdeen waterfront to have the same salty flavor it carried in the 1890s. Back when lumber mills were in full production and the railroad had just come to town, this was a rowdy town with sawdust on its streets, and hundreds of loggers and fishermen anxious to spend their money in saloons, brothels and gambling halls.

Aberdeen may have been the toughest town west of Chicago, according to museum director Sears. A disastrous 1903 fire obliterated most of downtown, but the town recovered and thrived. Today, it is home to a population of about 16,500, and although the wood products industry still contributes mightily to the economy, Aberdeen is much quieter than it once was.

Adjacent Hoquiam (pronounced “HO-kee-um”) has another 9,000 residents. It’s difficult to tell where one town stops and the other starts, as residential neighborhoods are as perfectly meshed as clasped hands. Nonetheless, Hoquiam and Aberdeen maintain separate identities and a fierce rivalry, most evident in high school sports competition.

In both cities, handsome Victorian mansions rise on the hillsides on the north side of the harbor. Several lumber barons’ estates are now bed-and-breakfast homes, including Hoquiam’s Castle (1901) and Aberdeen Mansion (1905). Hoquiam also boasts the stunning Seventh Street Theatre, which opened in 1928 with a design intended to evoke a Mediterranean village, and the Olympic Stadium, a 1938 Works Progress Administration project that is celebrated by the National Register of Historic Places as the largest all-wood stadium still standing in the United States.

Hoquiam’s Polson Museum, which occupies a stately 6,500-square-foot mansion built in 1924 as a lumberman’s home, has an outstanding collection of local memorabilia. So, too, does the Aberdeen Museum of History, on the ground floor of the city’s historic armory, where Sears has re-created a corner of the old city as it may have looked in the early 20th century.

Cobain country

Sears has not yet put together the exhibit he’s planning on rock musician Kurt Cobain, an Aberdeen native. Between 1987 and his death in 1994, Cobain achieved fame as the founder and leader of the seminal grunge-rock band Nirvana.

“Kurt’s grandfather, Leland Cobain, still lives in the area, and he and I are working on an exhibit,” Sears said. “Kurt’s former band member, Krist Novoselic, has been very helpful.” Now a leader in the Washington State Democratic Party, Novoselic (who attended high school in Aberdeen) grows vegetables on a farm in the southwestern part of the state. “He was profoundly saddened” by Cobain’s death at age 27, reportedly a suicide, Sears said.

With the help of Novoselic and the senior Cobain, Sears has created a tour brochure for “Kurt Cobain’s Aberdeen,” available at the museum. It locates the hospital where he was born in 1967, his early family homes, the music store where his uncle bought him his first guitar at age 14, the alley wall where he was arrested for spray-painting graffiti at age 18. It identifies the first ramshackle house where he lived by himself, and the places he worked odd jobs — the now-defunct Lamplighter Restaurant in Grayland, south of Westport, and the Polynesian Resort at Ocean Shores — to pay the rent.

In 1986, Cobain, Novoselic and drummer Aaron Burckhard formed a band called the Sellouts, performing covers of Creedence Clearwater Revival hits in local bars. A year later, Cobain and Novoselic moved from Aberdeen to Olympia, where they were joined by drummer David Grohl to form Nirvana and introduce “grunge” music to the world. Their first album, “Bleach,” was released in 1989; their second, “Nevermind,” made them international superstars in early 1992.

But Cobain never forgot that Aberdeen was his home. His parents, who divorced when he was young, both still lived in the area. His refuge, when he needed one, was the Sixth Street Bridge over the Wishkah River, at the end of Market Street northeast of downtown. Family and friends gathered here after Cobain’s death to scatter part of his ashes into the Wishkah.

A small park beside the bridge now commemorates the musician’s life. A signboard bears his image and lyrics from the song “Something in the Way,” in which he made reference to the bridge. A live compilation of Nirvana’s music, released in 1996, was titled “From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah.”

Westport and South Beach

Aberdeen may be the “grungy” hub of Grays Harbor, but the estuary is framed by the bookend communities of Westport and Ocean Shores. Though only three miles apart as the gull flies, they are a full hour’s drive — 50 miles — by highway, and are as different from other another as jazz music is from sea chanteys.

The chanteys are what you might hear in Westport, 22 miles southwest of Aberdeen via state Highway 105. It’s one of the truest fishing towns on the Pacific Northwest Coast. In addition to a big commercial fishery business, including seafood processing and shellfish harvesting, Westport is a major port for deep-sea charters and whale-watching tours. A dozen separate charter-boat operators have boats in the harbor, with rates for salmon or bottom fishing starting as low as $98 per person. Halibut fishing costs about twice that; all-day tuna fishing charters (mid-July through September) start at $450.

Apart from the bustling marina and excellent seafood restaurants, Westport has two visitor highlights. One is the Westport Maritime Museum, built in 1939 as a Coast Guard Lifeboat Station. In its collection are a 30-foot surf rescue boat and a 6-ton lens from an early offshore lighthouse on Destruction Island.

Westport’s own Grays Harbor Lighthouse, though a good mile inland from the Pacific Ocean, has been an active aid to navigation since 1898. Open daily through the summer, it sends a beacon far out to sea. Nearby, at Westhaven State Park, the South Jetty breakwater creates ideal conditions for surfers who often may be seen in the parking area, donning or peeling off their wetsuits.

The 14-mile stretch of shoreline extending south from Westport is known as South Beach. Equal parts summer-home community (especially around Grayland) and cranberry bogs, it ends at Cape Shoalwater, at the entrance to Willapa Bay’s fabled oyster grounds. Unlike Grays Harbor, Willapa Bay sees minimal commercial shipping traffic, and its south end is a national wildlife refuge.

A rare coastal winery is located about halfway between Westport and Aberdeen on state Highway 105. The Westport Winery, open daily, produces about two dozen wines: reds, whites, blushes and dessert vintages. Its grapes come primarily from the Columbia Valley, but final production is done here.

Ocean Shores

The nearest Pacific Ocean resort to Seattle, Ocean Shores occupies a six-mile-long peninsula at the north entrance to Grays Harbor, 23 miles west of Aberdeen via state Highway 109.

Its population of nearly 5,000 includes a great many retirees and second-home owners. Developed in the 1960s and incorporated in the ’70s, it consists mainly of a short commercial strip along Point Brown Avenue, a longer strand of small resort hotels along Ocean Shores Boulevard, and miles of residential development around man-made lakes and canals, with one popular golf course and another that has been cleared but temporarily abandoned.

A substantial buffer of grasses and other beach vegetation separates the hotels from the Pacific. Beachcombers and sunset watchers follow trails through the tussock-covered dunes from their lodgings to reach a broad sandy beach with a notable difference between low and high tides. In March, there’s a razor-clam festival here; in June, a kite fest; in July, a weekend triathlon. November attracts bands from around the Northwest for three days of Jazz at the Beach.

The nearest thing to a tourist attraction is the Ocean Shores Interpretive Center, next to the marina at the south end of the community near Damon Point State Park. Though small, it has excellent exhibits on local wildlife, and on the natural and human history of the entire Grays Harbor area. Also worth visiting is the Weatherwax Trail, midway up the peninsula beside Duck Lake; the 121-acre plot of temperate marine rainforest is home to a surprising community of wildlife, including deer, otters, raccoons and a great variety of birds.

The Quinault Beach Resort and Casino is a destination for many Ocean Shores visitors. It’s just a couple of miles north of town. Farther north, on state Highway 109, a string of pretty little communities brings travelers to Copalis Beach, Pacific Beach and Moclips, gateway to the large Quinault Indian Reservation.

Backcountry roads, narrow but paved, cut a few minutes’ traveling time off the return drive from Moclips to Aberdeen. They trace a route through isolated farmland, and more than a few pioneer-style homesteads, that — upon cresting the final hill for the downhill run to Grays Harbor — would leave it no surprise to spot a tall clipper ship sailing upon the waters.