Port Townsend, WA Hotels, Vacations, Tourism

With its brightly painted Victorian mansions, convivial cafés and vigorous cultural scene, PORT TOWNSEND has always had aspirations beyond its small-time logging roots. Gothic mansions sprang up above the flourishing port in the 1890s, when confident predictions of a railroad terminus lured in the rich. Unfortunately for the investors, the trains never arrived, and the town was left with a glut of stylish residences and a very small business district. Port Townsend's physical split – half on a bluff, half at sea level – reflects nineteenth-century social divisions, when wealthy … more »