This Is The Pacific Northwest's Quirkiest Little Town
Port Townsend, Washington, has stiff competition for the title of Pacific Northwest's quirkiest town. The region is packed with eccentric small towns where coffee is a way of life and a mist-shrouded forest usually sits at the edge. But few of them are stately Victorian seaports stranded at the remote northern tip of a wild peninsula. "We're all here because we're not all here," read the local bumper stickers. Port Townsend knows it's a little bit odd and runs with it. The town's artistic culture and maritime history make it one of the most unexpectedly quirky places in the Pacific Northwest.
A Brief History of Port Townsend
Located in the northern Olympic Peninsula with water on three sides, Port Townsend has always been a seagoing town. Its strategic location at the mouth of Puget Sound made it the Sound’s customs port of entry in the 1850s, almost from its inception in 1851. Much of the town sprang up to service the seafaring vessels that docked there on their way into Puget Sound, and later hopes of a railroad connection to Port Townsend triggered an 1890s speculation boom that gave the town the Victorian architectural character it retains to this day.
Many industries have been born and died in Port Townsend over the 170-ish years it’s been up and running, but what has remained is a hardscrabble character and a commitment to seeing things through, bred in part by the town’s remote location. It is in part what has helped Port Townsend retain its “living museum” look, the product of a midcentury push for preservation that sought successfully to keep the unused Victorian buildings downtown from being demolished. Thanks to their efforts, downtown Port Townsend is a collection of neatly-maintained Victorian streets with views of the mountains and sea; it’s not hard to see why tourism has given the town one of its latest leases on life.
Historic Elegance and Modern Quirkiness
There would be plenty of compelling reasons to visit Port Townsend even if it didn’t have so much character. Fort Worden State Park offers beach or forest hiking and camping with views of the Olympic Mountains, as well as abandoned turn-of-the-century military bunkers to explore. Twenty-five buildings on the National Register of Historic Places are quite a few for a town of this size, and there are plenty among them to recommend Port Townsend to architecture lovers. The characterful Northwest Maritime Center details its long and complex relationship with the sea, and Port Townsend's status as one of just three Victorian seaports recognized on the National Register of Historic Places merits quite a few visits all on its own. But it's the offbeat character of Port Townsend that clinches its title as the region's quirkiest town.
In keeping with its eclectic past, Port Townsend wears many hats today. It’s a proud city of artists, hosting studio tours every August to show off the work of local craftspeople who have made this delightfully incongruous town their home. The Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival pays homage to the town’s historic maritime heritage every September, bringing historically inspired vessels to Port Townsend’s harbors in celebration of a town that wouldn’t exist without its ties to the sea. Coffee shops like Better Living Through Coffee tie the town into the Pacific Northwest’s proud tradition of quirky independent coffee shops.
Port Townsend’s harbor houses a gray whale skeleton called Gunther, who has his own shelter on an outcropping of the pier, and the town is additionally home to Washington’s oldest grocery store, Aldrich’s Market, a Port Townsend grocery whose roots date to 1895 and which is open today at 940 Lawrence Street. You will find fading 19th-century advertising art on walls and live music at venues all over town; it’s something of a town trademark and can take any form from restaurant entertainment to Concerts on the Dock in the summer months. Port Townsend is also home to a herd of rather polarizing deer that treat the town as their playground. There is an easy wildlife sighting for those who don’t want to shell out for an orca-watching tour.
This is all to say that Port Townsend’s allure is as varied as its historic attempts to bring prosperity to the town. And all are undergirded by a cheerful, industrious spirit that knits Port Townsend’s community together.
Authentic but Stately
Art, music, history, and natural beauty, all with a dash of weirdness: Port Townsend is doing its own thing, and in most ways it’s doing it very well. The boom and bust cycles of its history have shaped it into the delightful mashup of disparate parts that it became, and today it retains its on-the-edge character while embracing the elegance it tried to make its own in the turn-of-the-century past. You would be hard-pressed to find a visitor who doesn’t find Port Townsend thoroughly lovable.
