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Port Townsend

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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A city, port of entry and the county-seat of Jefferson county, Washington, U.S.A., on Quimper Peninsula, at the entrance to Puget Sound, about 40 m. N.N.W. of Seattle. Pop. (1905, state census), 5300. The city is served by the Port Townsend Southern railway (controlled by the Northern Pacific, but operated independently) and by steamship lines to Victoria (British Columbia), San Francisco, Alaska and Oriental ports. The harbour is 71m. long and 31 m. wide, and is deep, well sheltered and protected by three forts, of which Fort Worden is an excellently equipped modern fortification ranking with the forts at Portland (Maine), San Francisco, Boston and New York. The United States government has at Port Townsend a customshouse, a revenue cutter service, a marine hospital, a quarantine station and an immigration bureau. Port Townsend is the port of entry for the Puget Sound customs district. In 1908 its exports were valued at $37,547,553, much more than those of any other American port of entry on the Pacific; its imports were valued in 1908 at $21,876,361, being exceeded among the Pacific ports by those of San Francisco only. The city has a considerable trade in grain, lumber, fish, livestock, dairy products and oil; its manufactures include boilers, machinery and canned and pickled fish, especially salmon and herring. Port Townsend was settled in 1854, incorporated as a town in 1860 and chartered as a city in 1890.