The One The Pacific Northwest Town Everyone Should Visit At Least Once

Sailors once counted more than a thousand tall ships anchored in the bay here. Then the railroad picked Tacoma instead, the boom collapsed, and Port Townsend froze in place around 1890, Victorian storefronts and all. That accident of history is the whole appeal. Artists moved into the empty buildings in the 1970s and stayed. The Race to Alaska launches off the working waterfront every June. Fort Worden's light station has marked the shipping channel since 1879. On the northeast tip of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, few towns in the Pacific Northwest reward a visit quite like this one.

Port Townsend's History Includes Big Dreams

The S'Klallam people lived on this stretch of the northeast Olympic Peninsula long before any settler arrived, and European contact in the late 1700s brought the disease outbreaks that devastated them. Settlers founded the town in 1851, and it grew fast. By the late 1800s Port Townsend was a flourishing seaport, its bluff and waterfront filling with Victorian houses and commercial blocks. Then the Northern Pacific Railroad ran its terminus to Tacoma instead, and the town emptied out through the 1890s. A paper mill in the 1920s slowed the bleeding without stopping it. What saved the place was the thing failure left behind: block after block of Victorian buildings nobody had the money to tear down. People came back for them in the 1970s, and the town has traded on that architecture, plus Fort Worden and nearby Olympic National Park, ever since.

A Town Of Boats

The economy stalled, so the town rebuilt itself around the water. More than a thousand tall ships once crowded Port Townsend Bay at its peak, and the seafaring reputation stuck. The waterfront still works today, home to hundreds of marine trades, and regattas run year-round. Visitors can push out onto the Salish Sea on a wildlife cruise, some of them chasing whales or puffins. To dig into the history, start at the Northwest Maritime Center at the foot of Water Street, which keeps an extensive maritime library. The Port Townsend Marine Science Center at Fort Worden is another easy hour or two, and its docents lead a Low Tide Walk worth timing your visit around. Then there is the Port of Port Townsend Boat Haven, the only boatyard in Washington open to the public.

Visiting Fort Worden Historical State Park

Fort Worden guarded this coast in wartime, and it is now one of the best state parks in Washington, four miles from downtown. The Point Wilson Lighthouse is the draw. A light station has stood on this sandy spit since 1879; the current tower went up in 1914, and its beam still marks the shipping channel into Puget Sound. The wildlife cooperates too, with seals, sea lions, and river otters working the shoreline. Above them, World War II concrete bunkers step up the ground between the beach and Artillery Hill, each battery named for a soldier who died in the war. Want more than a day here? Book a night in Alexander's Castle, the turreted brick oddity standing guard over the park.

Things To Do In Downtown Port Townsend

Water Street is where the town shows off, a run of Victorian facades with the sea at your shoulder. The 1890 Historic Fire Bell Tower still stands watch over it, holding the 1,500-pound bell that once called out fires. Down at Union Wharf, Gunther greets you: the 42-foot skeleton of a gray whale. Catch a new release at the Rose Theater or a coffee at Tyler Street Plaza, and give yourself a couple of hours, because the galleries earn it, the Port Townsend Gallery, Gallery 9, and Northwind Art among them.

The Olympic Discovery Trail starts near here too, running through evergreen forest with mountains, sea, lakes, and rivers along the way. And just west of town, Glass Beach rewards anyone willing to hunt for sea glass in the surf.

Where To Eat And Stay

All that walking earns a meal. The Salish Grill runs a deep lunch and dinner menu, salmon chowder, chimichurri tacos, cod and chips, while the Fountain Cafe leans into seafood linguine, crab cakes, risotto, and steak. For a pint and pub food, Sirens Gastropub sits right on the waterfront. When it is time to turn in, the choices span the map: the Monarch Hotel on Water Street, with boutique rooms looking out at water and mountains; the budget-friendly Tides Inn on the bay; and the Manresa Castle Hotel, a genuine 1892 landmark on Cleveland Street that keeps a warm, snug feel throughout.

Festivals To Look Forward To

Time your trip right and the calendar does the work. June belongs to the Race to Alaska, the longest human and wind-powered race in North America, 750 cold-water miles from Port Townsend to Ketchikan in Alaska. Any engineless vessel can enter, which is how paddleboards end up on the same start line as ocean racers. September brings the Wooden Boat Festival, the largest of its kind in the country: three days of boatbuilding workshops, live music, food vendors, and a beer garden. The Olympic Music Festival stages classical concerts across summer weekends, and Concerts on the Dock puts local bands on the waterfront on July and August evenings.

Olympic National Park

Do not leave without driving the hour to Olympic National Park. Time it for late September and the Salmon Cascades put on a show as the fish hurl themselves upstream; stay into October and the fall color pulls crowds of its own. Elk bugle across September. Strong hikers can take the High Divide Trail nearly 20 miles to a lookout facing Mount Olympus, and the truly committed can push all the way to La Push to watch fall storm waves break offshore from the Quileute Oceanside Resort.

Neighboring Towns Worth the Drive

One trip in and you will want to see what is next door. Sequim, about thirty miles off, has bears and lions at the Olympic Game Farm and lavender farms that bloom purple across summer. Chimacum is closer still, twenty minutes to organic farmsteads and historic grain mills. And an hour out, Port Angeles offers Hollywood Beach, a Saturday farmers market, and the murals and sculptures of the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center.

Fill The Top Spot On Your Pacific Northwest Travel Bucket List

Port Townsend earned its place the hard way. A town that boomed, busted, and got left for dead turned its abandoned Victorian core into the reason people now cross the state to see it. You get the original architecture, a working creative community, and a Water Street stroll that ends at a table by the water. Resilient, salt-worn, and one of a kind, it is a place worth seeing at least once.