PORT TOWNSEND, Wash., city, county seat of Jefferson County, on Port Townsend Bay, at the entrance to Puget Sound (q.v.), and on the Northern Pacific and the Port Town send Southern railroads, about 70 miles north of Olympia. It has steamer connection with San Francisco, Alaska and many of the prin cipal ports on the eastern coast of Asia. The harbor ranks with the largest in the world. The place was settled in 1851 and in 1860 was incorporated as a city. Port Townsend is on the west side of the bay, five miles by land and two and one-half miles by water from the city, and other government fortifications are located on Admiralty Head, Point Hudson, Point Part ridge and Marrowstone Point. The govern ment has established a marine hospital and a quarantine station. The city is included in the Puget Sound customs district, through which about $140,000,000 in trade passes annually.
The city is in an agricultural and lumbering region. In the vicinity are deposits of oil and valuable minerals. The chief industrial estab lishments are lumber and planing mills, a ship yard, machine shops, steam-boiler works, bot tling works, herring pickling and curing works, salmon and sardine canneries, grain elevators and flour mills. The chief exports are grain,
lumber, fish, oil, livestock, farm and dairy products and pig iron. The pig iron is from the Irondale furnaces. The principal public buildings are the government custom house, city ball, county courthouse, United States Marine Hospital, the quarantine station, a sana torium and Saint John's Hospital. The educa tional institutions are a high school, public elementary schools, private business schools and a public library. The scenery around Port Townsend is beautiful, surrounded as it is by water and mountains. The government is ad ministered under a charter of 1890, which pro vides for a mayor, who holds office one year, and a council. The administrative officials are appointed by the mayor or elected by the coun cil. Pop. 4,181.