Fort Townsend Historical State Park — Attraction in Port Townsend

There are a couple reasons for my low rating. The first thing you encounter is a very narrow road leading from the public street to the check-in booth. Go slow, tuck your mirrors in if another vehicle approaches. Check in booth vacant upon arrival, lack of staff. Instructions said to fill out a registration slip and write my registration number on it and put it in the iron ranger. They come around later and give you your printed check-in receipt. There are two camping areas. To your right up the hill into the trees is the main loop. Says for up to 30ft but I wouldn't go up there with anything longer than 25. Mostly tent campers. There is another area of 12 spaces inside and immediately to the left. Says for 30-34 feet but again, it was a stretch for me at 30 feet. These spaces are extremely narrow. Once I put my slides out the neighbors picnic table and BBQ were 8 inches from my left side and I was scraping branches on the right. Had to pull all the way forward and park behind because trees would have blocked my door otherwise. There is a sign directing you to either loop, but it is before the ranger booth. Very unsafe, no police presence or enforcement rangers. Upper loop is completely forested, no sun or sky so no solar or satellite connection. The camp bathroom with showers is in this loop. One shower per side. No door on it, just two curtains. But hot with good pressure. Down in the day use is one vault toilet (the other one is apparently full as it is boarded up) and over by the amphitheater and group picnic area is a newer (1930's CCC probably) bathroom that is clean. Walked in and it smelled and looked like every bathroom I'd been in at old Army barracks. Park is an old Army fort so that makes sense. The original buildings from the 1800's are all gone sadly. The lower 12 RV pull-thru spots sit on the site of the original base commander and senior officer housing according to plaques. There is a lot of grass area for the day use. A half mile walk down to a gravel beach. A couple of forest walks around the park including a botanical walk and a historical trail. As with many parks the maintenance is lacking here. Several of the lower RV spots have inches of mud and muck in them that no one cleans, one has a huge root in it that you have to drive over to get in, windows in bathrooms are simply boarded up when they break instead of new glass being put in, trash can in the day use was laying on the ground with trash spilled out when I got here and stayed that way for a day and a half before...

This park was very nice. The bad first: Due to the burn ban (despite the rain) we couldn't have a fire. Understandable and we knew about this before booking. Bring your propane fire pits! The bathrooms and showers were also under construction at the upper camp, which was unfortunate as we were tent camping and there was no alerts about this at all. I am disabled and we selected a campsite near the bathrooms specifically for my needs. 3 Porta-potties are available and well maintained. The showers are PAY TO USE in the lower campsite, which you will have to use as the upper showers are not available. $1 per 6 minutes. The sites in the upper camp are very small. We had to shift our table around and the only spot that fit our tent was on an incline. The other spots were about as small.

The good: The hiking/walking/biking trails here are among the nicest and best maintained I have seen! They were extremely quiet (other than 2 teenage girls blasting a radio on one path) and the leaves were begging to drop and turn. It was visually beautiful, and all the historic buildings are great to explore. It was not crowded at all, we had most areas to ourselves. There are some really beautiful vistas!

The park management keeps the park EXTREMELY clean. And I do mean extremely! I did not see a SINGLE piece of trash anywhere in the park, at any time during our stay of 3 days. I did see park management cleaning up, sweeping, etc multiple times.

Our campsite (space 78) has a little trail directly from the spot to the 2 walking trails in the back. Very convenient access.

We were able to see lots of birds (and even got to hear the bird-song of a rare species of tree bird) and heard hawks, owls, seagulls, and song birds.

We also spotted some seals just off shore and got to experience and watch a family of river otters hunting and eating fish. There are lots of deer in the park at this time with fawns. They will allow you to get within a few feet of them. Please don't pet them!

We were treated to two packs of coyotes singing for about 4-5 minutes each. A very lovely experience.

This was a great park for our stay and I would recommend it to anyone! It's very well priced, clean, and beautiful. Call ahead to check on...

If you're looking for a serene woodsy place to tent camp this is it! There are RV/trailer sites which are what you would expect - all in a line with no privacy between them. The tent sites all have moderate to high privacy, especially the perimeter sites. If you're in the middle of the loop then unfortunately you have people 360 degrees around you but still not terrible. I noticed that all the sites have fire pits with grills except for #2 for some reason. I would also avoid #2 and #3 as they are literally directly next to the bathrooms and there is a bright metal halide light outside the bathroom. The pull-through sites generally are more secluded and offer more natural buffers than the back-in sites do.

Within walking distance of the tent sites are large grassy fields with plenty of room for activities and games and there are several miles of easy walking trails that parallel the shore line with beautiful vistas overlooking Port Townsend Bay. One of the trails leads down to the shore which has a nice picnic table right on the shore. An added bonus for history buffs are the placards on one of the walking trails that tells the history of the park when it was an active Army base in the late 1800's. The trails are all wide and well-maintained as well as heavily shaded which is nice in the hot summer. Only of a few of the lesser used trails were quite narrow (shoulder width wide).

All in all my wife, daughter and I fell in love with this park and will definitely be...