Port Townsend - Sephari

By Rafe Calder

The railroad never came. That is the short version of why the buildings are still here.

Where it sits

Port Townsend is on the Quimper Peninsula in Jefferson County, Washington, at the northeast tip of the Olympic Peninsula. Captain George Vancouver named the bay “Port Townshend” in 1792, after the Marquis of Townshend. Wikipedia gives April 24, 1851 as the date the town was established. The 2020 census counted 10,148 residents.

Boom, then quiet

The numbers tell it better than adjectives. Wikipedia lists 917 people in 1880 and 4,558 in 1890, a rise of 397 percent in ten years. Then the railroads chose ports farther east on Puget Sound, and the article says that “by the late 1890s, the boom was over.” The 1900 census found 3,443 residents.

Here is the part that matters to a visitor. The same article says the ornate Victorian buildings from the prosperous years survive largely because the decline stopped anyone from demolishing and replacing them. That is our reading of it as well: a town that stops growing also stops rebuilding. The Port Townsend Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977.

The fort on the hill

Fort Worden is now a state park. It began as an artillery installation, and it appears in the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman. Wikipedia also says that a culture and arts organization called Centrum holds concerts, festivals and workshops there. We have not checked the current program, so look at the organizers’ own calendar before planning around it.

Why boats

Wikipedia calls Port Townsend “a maritime center for independent boatbuilders” and says wooden boats remain central to local identity and the local economy. The Northwest Maritime Center’s own timeline gives the dates behind that.

The Wooden Boat Foundation was founded in 1978, and the first Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival was held the same year. The timeline says more than 2,000 people came, from across the United States and several Canadian provinces. Youth and adult programs followed in 1980. In 1995 the foundation decided to build a permanent home, the Northwest Maritime Center. Construction began in July 2008, and the facilities opened at the 2009 festival.

The festival today, by the center’s own description, features more than 300 wooden vessels and several dozen indoor and outdoor presentations and demonstrations. The center also runs a maritime library, a chandlery and an active boatshop, all year round, in the Point Hudson district of downtown. That is a self-description, and we have not checked the opening hours.

How to read the place

A wooden boat and a Victorian storefront may have something in common. Our reading is that both reward repair over replacement, though no source we found says so. If you spend time here, look at how a hull is planked, then look at how a cornice has been patched, and decide if you agree.

Two clocks

The dates suggest the town has run on two clocks. The first ran from 1851 to the 1890s: a seaport that grew fast and then stalled. The second begins in 1978 with the Wooden Boat Foundation, about 88 years after the 1890 population peak in the figures above. The buildings belong to the first clock and the boat community to the second. They share a waterfront, and that is about as far as the record lets us go. We found no source on how many boatbuilders work in town today, so ask when you are there instead of relying on a number.

It is also a useful test of any craft town. Ask what the place kept and why. In Port Townsend the written record gives one answer for the buildings, a railroad that went elsewhere, and a different one for the boats, a community that organized itself around them in 1978 and has kept going since.

Roam first. Shop later.

Makers of wooden boats and marine craft can find out what’s involved at /sell-with-sephari/