Down the Road with Jumbo: Port Townsend Dreams

It's hard to believe, but even though I was born in Everett and lived here most of my life, I had never been to Port Townsend until last Friday. While I was still in Colorado, I told myself that on one of my visits to Everett, I would journey to Port Townsend to find a few of my roots. My great-great-grandparents, Nicholas Vance Sheffer and Alice Zipporah Webb lived there in the late 1850s and 1860s, before there was much of a town at all. It was important to me to experience a bit of what their lives might have been like, and I felt that a visit would help me with the book I am writing, based on their lives.

Larry had been feeling a bit water-logged, since it had been raining for quite a few days. In fact, he was ready to turn around and head back for Colorado - or at least, California. Fortunately, the day we decided to make the trip to Port Townsend was absolutely gorgeous.

We arrived at the ferry terminal in Mukilteo at just the right time. The lines weren't long at all. Too bad Ivar's wasn't open. It's never too early for some clam strips!

Soon we were boarding...

These seagulls posed quite nicely...

Whidbey Island was beautiful.

We made our way to Coupeville, and before long were arriving in Port Townsend. We drove down Water Street, oohing and aahing at the beauty of the old buildings as we drove by.

I wanted to visit the museum before doing anything else. Larry had no interest in that, so decided to take Duchess for a walk while I went inside. The gentleman behind the information desk filled me in on a lot of the history of the building , and then I went on to explore on my own. The basement housed the old jail, which contained a display of prostitution in the early days of the town. That would have been interesting, but my poor old knees weren't up to the climb down the long, steep stairs. The museum was pretty small, and I was hoping to find something about my great-great-grandfather, which I didn't, but I did learn a lot about the beginnings of the town itself.

When I was through, Larry and Duchess were just about to cross the street, heading back towards the car...

We decided to drive down to the beach. I was trying to imagine what it must have been like for Nicholas when he first saw this part of the country, and for Alice when she joined him here. The first houses were built not far from the beach itself, and the settlers spent a great deal of time with the Native Americans who lived along the shores.

We came upon an information board that verified that this was the beach where Nicholas and Alice most likely walked and interacted with the Native Americans who helped the "Bostons", as they called the white settlers, in so many ways.

After exploring the beach for awhile, we decided to drive around the old residential sections of town and check out some of the Victorian architecture.