Port Kingston Marina

by Greg Reed

Title

Port Kingston Marina

Artist

Greg Reed

Medium

Photograph - Photo

Description

Taken September 2006 at the Port Kingston Marina, Washington

Port History

This file made possible by: Washington Public Ports Association

HistoryLink File #9427

Voters on December 27, 1919, approve Port of Kingston’s plan to purchase and improve a wharf on Appletree Cove.

On December 27, 1919, voters approve the Port of Kingston’s plan to purchase a wharf on Appletree Cove and improve it for handling freight and passengers. Appletree Cove is on Puget Sound, on the south side of the Kitsap County town of Kingston. The Port of Kingston was formed in July 1919 to provide a public agency to maintain a landing dock for Mosquito Fleet steamers that provide transportation around Puget Sound. It needed voter approval of its comprehensive port development plan before beginning any improvement projects. In 1951 the state highway department will take over Puget Sound ferry operations and lease Port land for its terminal. The Port will then shift its efforts to developing a protected harbor and marina facilities. In 1966 the Army Corps of Engineers will construct a breakwater and basin and the Port will build a 274-slip marina, later expanded to include a small-boat facility and a guest dock. In 1997 the Port will purchase North Beach, just north of the ferry terminal and make it accessible for public use. In 2010 the Port will begin a twice-daily passenger ferry service between Kingston and downtown Seattle.

Logging and Leisure
Appletree Cove, on which Kingston, an unincorporated town in Kitsap County, sits, attracted its first white settlers in the 1880s and its first plat was filed in 1890. The Kingston Land and Improvement Company, formed by a group of Seattle investors, sought to establish the area as a “resort and hideaway for Seattle folk,” according to Kingston historian Harold F. Osborne (Little City by the Sea, 6).

Logging also drew people to the area. A logging railroad that brought logs in from the inland forests of the peninsula ended at a dock on the cove. Ships carried the logs to area sawmills. The Kingston Shingle Company employed a large number of area residents in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Some rudimentary roads connected Kitsap Peninsula towns in the early twentieth century, but the Tacoma Narrows Bridge did not open until 1940 and passenger rail lines stopped at Tacoma and Seattle. This left peninsula residents mostly reliant on waterborne transportation.

Some residents took to the water in their own small boats, much as the Indians had for thousands of years. As towns grew and steamships became more common on Puget Sound, freight and passengers moved around more often on commercially operated steamers. Known collectively as the Mosquito Fleet, the various steamship companies created a network of routes that connected the many small towns dotting the coast of Puget Sound and Hood Canal with each other and with the larger cities, such as Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia.

A Sheltered Harbor
Kingston, situated on one of the few sheltered harbors between Port Townsend and Seattle, served as a convenient stop for passenger and freight lines. The S.S. Dode ran between Seattle, Kingston, and towns on Hood Canal. The May B (later retrofitted and renamed May B II) connected Kingston with Ballard, a neighborhood in Seattle. The State of Washington, a sternwheeler, ran between Kingston, Port Gamble, and other Hood Canal towns.

Having a steamship dock helped Kingston grow into a freight and passenger hub. Farmers, loggers, and sawmill workers living in the surrounding countryside used the Kingston dock to load their farm produce onto steamers headed for markets and to take trips themselves. Likewise, people from larger towns came to Kingston for day trips or extended vacations. For holidays like the Fourth of July, Kingston became a popular destination for “excursionists.”


Source: http://www.portofkingston.org/port-history/

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September 8th, 2012

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