The 7 Most Picturesque Towns In Washington

You could be on a rocky cliff at Lime Kiln Point watching orcas surface off Friday Harbor. Or ducking into a Christmas shop in Leavenworth in July and thinking you’ve been teleported to Bavaria. Or walking a Victorian street in Port Townsend or an Old West boardwalk in Winthrop. Washington’s towns are eccentric and varied. The rainforests, glaciated peaks, and wild coastline shape them all. These seven are the best of that spirit.

Sequim

On the Olympic Peninsula, Sequim is a relaxing community that puts on agricultural events and offers access to a unique wildlife refuge. The Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge is home to more than 250 species of birds and 41 mammals and contains a very unique landform, a sand spit. This is a long, narrow body of sand that looks like sand was spat out onto the water. At 5.5 miles long, the Dungeness Spit is one of the longest natural sand spits in the world.

Other than sand, Sequim is a colorful town, as is visible from Purple Haze Lavender, where the purple plant blooms in late June. Every July, the town celebrates its lavender heritage with the Sequim Lavender Festival. Sequim also runs Washington State’s longest continuously running festival, the Irrigation Festival. Held each May, this festival celebrates the irrigation ditches that brought water from the Dungeness River to the prairie where Sequim is located.

Leavenworth

Leavenworth gives off an Old World vibe with its Bavarian-style village. It was originally a small logging town in the late 1800s, as well as an office for the Great Northern Railway. In the 1960s, the town formed Project LIFE to create a Bavarian-Swiss Alps style town, which successfully revitalized it as a destination with a wide variety of German alpine-style attractions, including Kris Kringl, a year-round Christmas store filled with ornaments, collectibles, decor, and gifts.

Speaking of nutcrackers, the town maintains a huge collection at the Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum (more than 9,000 in fact). Visitors to Leavenworth can spend time interacting with reindeer at the Leavenworth Reindeer Farm or hike up steep cliffs via the nearby Peshastin Pinnacles State Park, named after its sandstone slabs.

Friday Harbor

Just around 2,800 people live in this community on San Juan Island, an island defined by orcas, beaches, and even a rare native prairie. From Friday Harbor, visitors can reach the San Juan Island National Historical Park, with hikes up to overlooks like Mount Finlayson or wildlife viewing from Granny’s Cove.

Whale-watching is one of the most popular activities in Friday Harbor, with several companies offering tours at the waterfront. Those who prefer to stay on shore can look for whales from west-side viewpoints such as Lime Kiln Point State Park, a rocky cliffside park with trails and a historic lighthouse. The Whale Museum provides information on the Salish Sea ecosystem in western Washington, along with an orca skeleton and educational material about these creatures.

Port Townsend

Located on the northeast corner of the Olympic Peninsula, Port Townsend is a rare Victorian-era port that has maintained that vibe with its National Historic District. Several of these structures are still standing, such as the 1889 Ann Starrett House, which stands out for its four-story polygonal tower, frescoes and murals, and central heating, which was rare at the time.

Many of its museums are also housed in historic places, like the Jefferson County Historical Society’s Museum of Art + History, contained within the 1892 City Hall building, and the Puget Sound Coast Artillery Museum, located in Building 201 at Fort Worden. One of the best ways to see the town’s history is at Fort Worden Historical State Park, where hikers can explore historic gun batteries, beaches, museums, and Point Wilson Lighthouse, a historic light station overlooking the water.

Port Angeles

Port Angeles is a main gateway town to Olympic National Park. This park is one of the most diverse of America’s national parks, consisting of nearly a million acres of glacier-capped mountains, old-growth temperate rain forests, and wild coastline. Visitors can hike through Hurricane Ridge, known for its powerful winds, or go through the Hoh Rain Forest, which is a famously peaceful and quiet region.

Within the rainforest, One Square Inch of Silence is marked by a small red stone and represents an effort to preserve one of the park’s quietest natural soundscapes. In the town of Port Angeles proper, guests can hike through public art displays like Webster’s Woods Art Park, containing more than 100 sculptures hidden in the trees.

Winthrop

Winthrop sits at the foothills of the Cascades mountains in the north-central section of the state and was named after explorer Theodore Winthrop. As the North Cascades Highway neared completion in 1972, town residents transformed the space into an Old West theme in a similar effort to Leavenworth. Today, the town offers Western comforts like drinks from Three Fingered Jack’s Saloon and historical artifacts in an old-timey western-style museum called the Shafer Historical Museum.

Like any cowboy town, it’s easy to ride off into the sunset with the town’s access to nature, especially near North Cascades National Park. Far up in these cliffs, hikers can explore glaciated mountain peaks or go whitewater rafting via the Skagit and Stehekin Rivers. To get a full taste of Winthrop’s western culture, visitors should come during May for the annual Winthrop ‘49er Days celebration. The town holds parades, games, dancing, and western activities during this long-running festival.

Anacortes

Located on Fidalgo Island, Anacortes is an entry point to several islands off the coast of Washington, including San Juan Island, Lopez Island, and many others. The town itself is worth visiting for its scenery. One especially photographed place near Anacortes is Deception Pass State Park, which spans Fidalgo and Whidbey islands and is linked by iconic bridges. Its name comes from George Vancouver’s 1792 expedition, which initially mistook Whidbey Island for a peninsula before realizing the narrow passage separated it from Fidalgo Island.

Today, the park maintains bridges between the strait, old-growth forest trails, and ocean cliffs. Venturers can take a kayak out on the waterfront to explore Fidalgo Island from a different point of view. For dining, there’s Italian fare at Nonna Luisa Ristorante and an alehouse at Brown Lantern.

Countless Experiences in Washington

These seven towns are all unique places. Together, they show off Washington’s range, from lavender fields and wildlife refuges to Victorian streets, alpine storefronts, island shorelines, and Old West boardwalks. The protected landscapes near these towns are also unique, like the 5.5-mile-long Dungeness Spit in a national wildlife refuge or the peaceful Hoh Rain Forest of Olympic National Park. There’s more than just natural beauty to see, as Port Townsend demonstrates with its Victorian architecture. In these towns, one can find countless experiences that will leave lasting memories.