Biohazard Cleanup Near Cappy's Port Townsend, WA

Port Townsend is the county seat of Jefferson County and its only incorporated city, sitting on the Quimper Peninsula at the northeastern tip of the Olympic Peninsula where Puget Sound meets the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Captain George Vancouver named the bay "Port Townshend" in 1792 for his friend the Marquis of Townshend, and the American city was officially founded on April 24, 1851, making it one of the oldest incorporated cities in Washington.

Port Townsend is nicknamed the "City of Dreams" and the "Key City" because 19th-century speculators were convinced it would become the largest harbor on the West Coast of the United States.

The 2020 census counted 10,148 residents in Port Townsend living in 5,122 households.

Port Townsend boomed as a Victorian seaport in the late 1800s, but the boom collapsed in the 1890s when the railroads terminated on the east side of Puget Sound instead, and the town shrank for decades afterward.

Because so few of its ornate Victorian buildings were ever torn down or built over, the Port Townsend Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1977.

Port Townsend sits in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains and receives only about 19 inches of rain per year, far less than the surrounding region.

Fort Worden, a former coastal artillery fortification next to the city, is now Fort Worden Historical State Park and hosts writers' conferences, music festivals, and other cultural programming.

The city remains a maritime center for independent boatbuilders and wooden-boat crafts, and it hosts the annual Wooden Boat Festival as well as the Port Townsend Film Festival, held every September since 1999.

The bay off Port Townsend is home to Naval Magazine Indian Island, the U.S. Navy's primary munitions-handling dock on the Pacific coast.