Port History
The Port of Port Townsend was established
under the Washington State laws of 1911 by election on November
4, 1924. The port district includes all of Jefferson County
and continues to operate as a municipal corporation under Title
53 of the Revised Code of Washington (RCW).
This step, formalizing the port district, was a long time in the
making.
George, First Marquis of Townshend,
painted in 1792 by George Romney
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In 1792,
Captain George Vancouver sailed his ship, the HMS
Discovery inland from Cape Flattery, putting into
Discovery Bay for repairs. While in the area, he observed
what his log describes as a "very safe and capacious harbour," which
he named Port Townsend in honor of his friend, the first Marquis
of Townshend.
Almost
sixty years later the first white settlers, Alfred Plummer and
Charles Bachelder arrived and built a log cabin at what is now
the corner of Water and Tyler Streets. On April 24, 1851,
Port Townsend filed as the Puget Sound's second city, after
Olympia and six months before Seattle. From its beginnings
as a logging and farming town, Port Townsend quickly entered
the seafaring world as its first major commercial enterprise.
Only three years after its founding, the town became the headquarters
of the Puget Sound Customs District. From its small beginnings,
Port Townsend became a thriving international seaport with a reputation
as notorious as San Francisco's Barbary Coast.
For a time,
about half the ships that came into the Puget Sound picked up
their crews in Port Townsend.
Since there were not enough men in town willing to go to sea for
extended periods, shanghaiing became a business staple. Saloons,
brothels, and gambling halls were accepted as a necessary, if regrettable,
feature of the thriving maritime economy. To insulate their
families from the rough-and-tumble downtown, the wealthier citizens
developed a commercial "uptown" district on the bluff
above Water Street...away from the sailors, gamblers, "fancy
ladies" and other
"lower" elements down on the bay's shores.
As the
non-seafaring population increased, Port Townsend reached a tentative
agreement with the Oregon Improvement Company, a subsidiary of
the Union Pacific Railroad, to route its line from the Columbia
River to Port Townsend. The speculation boom was on and
population quickly doubled in anticipation of a golden future.
Property values skyrocketed and business flourished. At the
end of 1890, however, the railroad announced that it would terminate
in Seattle, and the City of Dreams very quickly went into an economic
tailspin.
The construction
of a pulp and paper mill in 1927 helped Port Townsend recover
and remain viable through the Great Depression. Today the
Port Townsend Paper remains the largest single employer in Jefferson
County.
On December
5, 1927, a delegation representing the Port Townsend Chamber
of Commerce urged the Port Commission to develop a boat harbor. Local
citizens had been advocating the building of a small harbor to
better accommodate small boats and fishing vessels for several
years. In response Mr. E. Gribble, manager of the Port
of Olympia, was hired as an engineer to study the bay and
determine the most suitable site for the new harbor. On
March 18, 1931, the proposal for building the new harbor submitted
by the Puget Sound Bridge and Dredging Company was accepted,
and the first pile was soon driven into the bottom of Port Townsend
Bay.
Throughout
the ups and downs of the local economy, the buildings and homes
of the town's first boom remained intact. In 1976,
after years of hard work, the waterfront district and the residential
area on the bluff were designated a National Historic District,
and Port Townsend is today recognized as one of only three Victorian
Seaports on the National
Register of Historic Places.
