Captain George Vancouver, sailing under the British flag, was the first to put the Port Townsend area on the map. He arrived in 1792 and described Port Townsend Bay as "a very safe and capacious harbor." Port Townsend was founded in 1851 and become the state's second city, after Olympia, six months earlier than Seattle. In the 1890s, when Port Townsend was Port of Entry for the entire Pacific Northwest, most ocean traffic was compromised of sailing vessels. The small seafaring town was dominated by warehouses and wharves, saloons and brothels, becoming a thriving international seaport with a reputation as notorious as San Francisco's Barbary Coast.

Photo of Union Wharf,  from the collection of the Jefferson County Historical Society.

Horace McCurdy wrote: "To be in Port Townsend, Washington, at the down of the 20th Century was to be born to the sea and to grow up with its stirring sights, its heady smells and its profound mystery soaking into a boy the way the grainy sea salt impregnates a half-tide rock. "

In 1976 the downtown waterfront district was designated a National Landmark Historic District. The city is also recognized as one of only three Victorian Seaports in the nation, and the only one on the west coast. Apace with its evolution into a vacation destination, Port Townsend is establishing international reputation for building fine wooden sailing vessels and state-of-the-art motor yachts. In addition, the Centrum Arts Foundation has established itself as one of the region's major cultural institutions, and attracts audiences from throughout the nation. Annually, over one million visitors come to Port Townsend to experience the artistry, the historic buildings, wooden boats, and to catch a glimpse of the region's maritime past.

McCurdy Boatyard Courtesy, Jefferson Historical Museum

The idea of a Maritime Center for Port Townsend was born more than fifteen years ago. In the late 1980s and early 1990s tourism growth in the Historic District of Port Townsend, coupled with accelerated demand for condominium and hotel development along the city's working waterfront, displaced many existing water-related uses. In response to the pressures of these market forces, a group of marine trade businesses and non-profit organizations proposed a seaport project at Point Hudson to preserve and enhance the area's identity as a working marina. Due to a lack of funding and governmental support this effort failed, but the idea survived.

During the same timeframe, a key waterfront parcel adjacent to Point Hudson, the Thomas Oil property, faced the prospect of private development which many citizens felt was inappropriate: a 50-unit condominium complex in 1990, and a $20 million luxury hotel in 1993. The public outcry that resulted led to a halt of both proposals and to new zoning and shoreline regulations designed to protect the city's working waterfront.

In the mid 1990s the city and the port of Port Townsend negotiated a purchase agreement for the Thomas Oil property. However, due to a shift in political power, this offer was withdrawn. The Wooden Boat Foundation resurrected the idea for a maritime center in 1997. In 1998, the Wooden Boat Foundation handed off the proposal to the newly formed Northwest Maritime Center, a nonprofit organization, so that the Foundation could continue to focus on providing maritime programs as opposed to buying property and constructing facilities. The Wooden Boat Foundation will be an anchor tenant at the new facility.

The Northwest Maritime Center (NMWC) is a non-profit alliance of community organizations working together to, build a multi-purpose, public maritime center featuring education and heritage buildings, on-the-water programs, educational workshops and exhibits, and public access to the shoreline.

From
Puget Sound Ferries
From Canoe to Catamaran
An Illustrated History
Carolyn Neal & Thomas Kilday Janus
©2001 American Historical Press