Burley is an
unincorporated community
An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...
and
census-designated place
A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only.
CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...
(CDP) in
Kitsap County
Kitsap County is a County (United States), county in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, its population was 275,611. Its county seat is Port Orchard, Washington, Port Orchard; its ...
,
Washington
Washington most commonly refers to:
* George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States
* Washington (state), a state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A ...
, United States. It is located just north of the boundary with
Pierce County, about halfway between
Gig Harbor
Gig Harbor () is the name of both a bay on Puget Sound and a city on its shore in Pierce County, Washington. The population was 12,029 at the 2020 census.
Gig Harbor bills itself as "the Maritime City" and maintains a strong connection to its ...
to the south and
Port Orchard
Port Orchard, part of Washington state's Puget Sound, is the strait that separates Bainbridge Island on the east from the Kitsap Peninsula on the west. It extends from Liberty Bay and Agate Pass in the north to Sinclair Inlet and Rich Passag ...
to the north. It is located at the head of the
Burley Lagoon
Burley Lagoon is a picturesque watershed located on the Key Peninsula in the U.S. state of Washington. The Purdy Bridge and Purdy Sand Spit separate Burley Lagoon from Henderson Bay at the northern end of Carr Inlet.
The unincorporated communit ...
in Henderson Bay. Burley is a residential area. The community's population stood at 2,081 at the
2020 census.
History
Burley was established in 1898 as a cooperative
socialist
Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...
colony
[Charles Pierce LeWarne, ''Utopias in Puget Sound, 1885-1915''. Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1975] by a group called the
Co-operative Brotherhood, an offshoot of the Brotherhood of the Co-operative Commonwealth that had established
Equality Colony
Equality Colony was a United States socialist colony founded in Skagit County, Washington by a political organization known as the Brotherhood of the Cooperative Commonwealth in 1897. It was meant to serve as a model which would convert the rest ...
elsewhere in Washington state in the previous year. Both communities were part of an attempt to plant socialist colonies in Washington in order to convert first the state, and then the entire nation, to socialism.
[
Burley was originally named "Brotherhood". Circle City was an area of the colony with buildings laid out on the periphery of a circle. In its earliest years the community achieved a maximum population of approximately 150,][ but like some other planned towns of the era such as Equality Colony, its population endured a long decline through the ensuing years. The local economy was dominated by the lumber industry; other businesses never flourished, though a cigar-manufacturing effort did achieve some short-term success.][
]
Geography
Burley is in southern Kitsap County. It is bordered to the south by the Pierce County communities of Wauna and Purdy. Washington State Route 16
State Route 16 (SR 16) is a state highway in the U.S. state of Washington, connecting Pierce and Kitsap counties. The highway, signed as east–west, begins at an interchange with Interstate 5 (I-5) in Tacoma and travels t ...
passes through the eastern side of Burley, leading north to Port Orchard and south to Gig Harbor. According to the U.S. Census Bureau
The United States Census Bureau, officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. federal statistical system, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The U.S. Census Bureau is part of the U ...
, the Burley CDP has a total area of , of which are land and , or 3.04%, are water.
See also
* Social Democracy of America
The Social Democracy of America (SDA), later known as the Cooperative Brotherhood, was a short lived political party in the United States that sought to combine the planting of an intentional community with political action in order to create a ...
* Socialist Party of Washington
The Socialist Party of Washington was the Washington state section of the Socialist Party of America (SPA), an organization originally established as a federation of semi-autonomous state organizations.
During the 1910s, the Socialist Party of Wa ...
References
External links
Description of Burley in the old days
Census-designated places in Washington (state)
Census-designated places in Kitsap County, Washington
Populated places established in 1898
Utopian communities in Washington
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