The intrepid English Captain George Vancouver named Port Townsend’s harbor at the entrance to Puget Sound for his friend the Marquis of Townshend. According to local historian C.H. Hanford, American patriots and fur traders in 1843, anxious to hold the Oregon Territory for America, placed their fingers on Port Townsend bay as a strategic point to unfurl the American flag. From there, overland routes point to the south and the east. Also, that junction established a counter-threat to the British presence in Victoria, British Columbia. Thus began a long international struggle.
When Americans Alfred Plummer, H.C. Wilson, and George Bachelder came off the San Francisco brig George Emery, and staked claims below the future town’s vertical clay bluffs in April, 1851, they kept the name Port Townsend and applied it to a townsite. Within three years (by 1853) Port Townsend was named the official Port of Entry to Puget Sound for ships from around the world. The small clapboard Customs House was part of the “deal” negotiated by Seattle pioneers Arthur Denny and Daniel Bagley, giving Seattle the university, Walla Walla the penitentiary, and Vancouver the state capital (later changed to Olympia).
Port Townsend’s reputation in the 1860s resembled a Pacific Northwest version of Sodom and Gomorrah. The “Downtown,” was a sailor’s paradise, boasting barrooms, prostitutes, gambling and smuggling. One roving band, calling themselves the “Forty Thieves,” became famous for engaging in every sort of nefarious waterfront activity. Proper families retreated to “Uptown,” and hunkered down in beautiful Victorian mansions, many of which remain today.
Boosters in the 1870s gave Port Townsend the title: “Key City of the Sound.” It was not a hollow phrase. Port Townsend hoped that the Northern Pacific Railroad Company would choose it as their western terminus, snaking up the west side of Puget Sound to be closer to the Pacific Ocean. When Tacoma won the railroad prize, residents of Port Townsend turned to the prospect of grain shipments from the Columbia River as the key to Key City.
In the 1880s, naturalist John Muir provided a word picture of the town. “This being the port of entry, all vessels stop here, and they make a lively show about the wharves and in the bay. The winds stir the flags of every civilized nation, while the Indians, in their long-beaked canoes, glide about from ship to ship, satisfying their curiosity of trading with the crews. . . . Groups may often be seen, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Scandinavians, Germans, Moors, Japanese, and Chinese of every rank and station and style of dress and behaviour.”
The grain shipments did not come, so the boosters started shipbuilding at nearby Irondale, established a new sawmill at Hadlock, continued construction of the sturdy buildings we see today, and began planning a railroad of their own, called the Port Townsend Southern, to run down the west side of Hood Canal.
An era of land speculation roared out of Puget Sound country in the 1890s. Port Townsend got aboard. When that died out in the 1893 Panic, the Key City was spent. It was left with some of the finest homes and commercial buildings north of San Francisco, many of them empty or half-built. Those grand edifices have become another version of Key City, a quaint and colorful metropolis facing two bodies of water and gazing across at Mt. Baker.
Tourism, boating, recreation, and retirement amenities have replaced a hellbent sailor’s town and the real estate speculator’s paradise of earlier days. Summers now boom in Port Townsend, and winters bring cozy drinks, filmmakers, and festivals both in the town and at the nearby old Army Fort Worden, home of Centrum and its year-round feast of the arts and crafts. At long last, real estate prices have repaid years of hope over the railroad that never came.
Thank you for this! My father lived in Port Townsend for many years, on a tiny 30s era farm on the outskirts of the town. It’s a far livelier place now, to be sure. But … I feel it’s lost something. I loved the gritty, waterfront place of the “Officer and a Gentleman” film-days..the town was not all saloons and dives. It was filled with friendly people and working-class seafood cafes. Visiting him as a 13 year old from Seattle (divorced parents), I experienced nothing but kindness.
One of the factors in historic preservation is a steady, slow decline of the once-grand buildings. They need to be built in a boom-time, as Port Townsend’s were (and Pioneer Square), and then there has to be a steady decline of the local economy. Periods of boom lead developers to tear down the old buildings and build new ones. Conversely, too bad an economy leads the owners to neglect repairs to the old ones or (as with Vancouver, BC), just to renovate the first floors for tourist traps. Port Townsend, with its various visions for greatness, managed a steady decline and the old buildings still stand, a tribute to railroad dreams.
In converting Seattle’s First Hill Christian Science Church to Town Hall, we had similar good luck. Each year the mother church in Boston insisted on an inspection and if the local church didn’t fix the leaky roof, the mother church would to it and send the bill to the locals. The steady decline of congregation from hundreds when it was built in the 1920s (peak of the Christian Science movement) to a tiny handful of congregants also kept the building from being able to afford many improvements and modernization. The result in 1999 was a highly preserved building, inside and out, with just one new feature (an elevator). We were lucky, as was Port Townsend. Now, of course, Town Hall Seattle has benefited from a very sensitive, preservationist $35 million renovation. Kudos to Wier Harman and the Town Hall board for pulling off this grand, patient revival.
Historic preservation of ornate old buildings is the prevailing view of what should be preserved — but that view tends to overlook historic farmhouses, outbuildings, and small-town dwellings, along with their places of fun and worship, which are ultimately demolished. Snohomish is a good example. Once the county seat, before Everett, Snohomish featured many fine old dwellings, mansions, a Carnegie Library, which are still standing– but the authentic schoolhouses with bells are gone, a tiny roadside chapel, gone, and old agricultural remnants such as auction houses, grange buildings — all gone.
I lived on the Peninsula and worked in PT in the lates 70s. I worked on Water Street with an office over the street and a workshop overlooking the bay. In the summer it was too loud to think, in the winter too quiet.
In PT the odds were good, but the goods were odd. PT had/has a steady stream of people who come to retire, start over, hide out, and generally live the good life on the windy edge of the Quimper Peninsula.
In my time, the mayor spent more time playing piano at jazz alley than in the office, Frank Herbert was a grouch, Neil Young summered on his boat, and Jack Sikma was pushing real estate. An Officer and A Gentleman was being filmed at the time and in town the cocaine flowed like….wine?
There was a distinct difference in thought and behavior between the local paper mill and wood products workers (loggers) and the aforementioned citizens who felt a little superior. Boat builders lived in both worlds. I found PT to be extremely diverse and full of cliques, which defeats diversity. I guess not much has changed since then except the spotted owl, which decimated the wood products industry. At least PT still has its ‘stinky’ mill.
I no longer live or work there and i miss it so, but not so much to move back. I like high blood pressure.
In my opinion, Port Townsend has not changed that much in 50 years. What changes that have occurred are due to the internet and remote working. I worked in PT because my boss could afford to live anywhere because his clients were in Japan, our meetings were quarterly, we had a fax, and a LexisNexis account. The Hood Canal bridge had sunk so getting to Seattle and SeaTac was an all day event.
Since my time there, most every restaurant and store has closed and reopened under new management, a big grocery store got built, the ferry moved, Sea Galley and The Blue Parrot are gone, the seafood pier collapsed, tourists still crowd the summer, and you can drive a truck down the sidewalk in winter without an injury.
And many in Port Townsend were and are still waiting for the next boom. A great little town, it will always be; but never what it once was nor aspired to be. Tacoma by and by, i hope not.
I lived on the Peninsula and worked in PT in the lates 70s. I worked on Water Street with an office over the street and a workshop overlooking the bay. In the summer it was too loud to think, in the winter too quiet.
In PT the odds were good, but the goods were odd. PT had/has a steady stream of people who come to retire, start over, hide out, and generally live the good life on the windy edge of the Quimper Peninsula.
In my time, the mayor spent more time playing piano at jazz alley than in the office, Frank Herbert was a grouch, and Jack Sikma was pushing real estate. An Officer and A Gentleman was being filmed at the time and in town the cocaine flowed like….wine?
There was a distinct difference in thought and behavior between the local paper mill and wood products workers (loggers) and the aforementioned citizens who felt a little superior. Boat builders lived in both worlds. I found PT to be extremely diverse and very cliqueish I guess not much has changed since then except the spotted owl, which decimated the wood products industry. At least PT still has its ‘stinky’ mill.
I no longer live or work there and i miss it so, but not so much to move back.
In my opinion, Port Townsend has not changed that much in 50 years. What changes that have occurred are due to the internet and remote working. I worked in PT because my boss could afford to live anywhere because his clients were in Japan, our meetings were quarterly, we had a fax, and a LexisNexis account. The Hood Canal bridge had sunk so getting to Seattle and SeaTac was an all day event.
Since my time there, most every restaurant and store has closed and reopened under new management, a big grocery store got built, the ferry moved, Sea Galley and The Blue Parrot are gone, the seafood pier collapsed, tourists still crowd the summer, and you can drive a truck down the sidewalk in winter without an injury.
And many in Port Townsend were and are still waiting for the next boom. A great little town, it will always be; but never what it once was nor aspired to be.
In my view, you lived there during its ‘golden’ and best age. I would love to sit at the counter, as a kid at one of the clam cafes again, listening to the waitress and my father talk about tide tables and clamming. I may be over romanticizing it, but I loved the old town. It’s still beautiful, of course.
I recommend reading about James G. Swan if you’re interested in PT in the mid-1800s. There are several sources.
https://historylink.org/File/5029