July, 2025
Ok, let’s go see some things in the impressively historic town of Port Townsend, which is right next to the Point Hudson marina/RV park. I’ll go walk around “downtown” Port Townsend in a day or so, and I’ll share highlights of that with you too. But today I jumped in the big white truck and headed up the hill behind the town so I could see some of the really amazing old homes here. A few deer joined my journey too. Come on along! 🙂
I will mostly just share photos … with a few comments now and then. These are really old homes! Click on photos to enlarge them.
The sign below was posted on the house above … built in 1901 … and that was one of the NEWER old homes here.
Below … wow look at this one! It was built in 1889.
Below … a fire escape!
The home above had this sign (below) in front of it. The home is now a multi-use room-by-room-rented business so you can stay there! The Starrett House. And spooky history here.
Ah, but here are some more wonderful homes ….. look at the detail.
And then (below) around another corner, I found this deer person eating tree leaves, above her! I’ve seen deer reaching up momentarily to reach leaves, but never anything like this. She’s a dancer and an athlete!
My truck was stopped of course and I didn’t get out. The video above was taken through the windshield of the truck. She did that same dance for the leaves a few more times but then she eventually stopped. She then walked into the yard of the home on the right, and that’s when I saw that she had a spotted fawn with her. In the photo below, she had just turned her head and spotted me. Ha! did she think she was hiding behind that light pole? Maybe. But she sure was checking me out.
Moments later, she and her spotted babe were headed off into the woods behind that home.
Down another street, around another block or two, I was surprised by this view of a clock/bell tower (below). I was up on top of a hill right then, so the roofs of homes were on eye-level with me, which means that clock/bell tower was tall! You can see the bell inside the tower many feet below the clock. I was so impressed! It was afternoon when I was here (2pm by that clock) so the sun was to the west, behind that clock tower …. so I drove around several blocks in order to get to the sunny side of the structure.
And below … I made it there. That tower is huge. The building was built in 1892 as the new Jefferson County Courthouse with a clock/bell tower that is 124 feet tall. The clock seemed to be about 10-12 feet in diameter. More information is here.
And then on my drive back through the residential areas of Port Townsend, back to my campsite at Point Hudson, there were many more old homes to see … please do open photos by clicking on them, and notice the details on all of these buildings.
I wish every one of these homes had information about their build date, and who built them, and who lived in them. All I could do was be so fascinated by them.
The town of Port Townsend is small by comparison with other “cities” in the State of Washington, but it was one of the first towns here … and one of the first to have major access to the salt water … to fishing and shipping. That’s why there are so many old homes and other buildings here that date back to the 1800s.
As mentioned, I’ll share my walk of downtown Port Townsend here soon along with historic information about the town. It’s such a great place to visit on a nice sunny day. 🙂