10 Small Washington Towns That Feel Frozen in Time

Port Townsend

Investors poured in during the 1880s, constructed ornate Victorian commercial blocks on Water Street, and started to build grand homes up on the bluff. Then the railroad bypassed the town to go to Tacoma, the boom ended practically overnight, and Port Townsend never became the great city that it was supposed to become. That’s where the charm of the town comes from.

evelopment pressure never arrived and the downtown Victorian district became a National Historic Landmark. The brick storefronts of the 1880s and 1890s are real, not reconstructions.
The town gets tourists in the summer, and the ferry from Coupeville connects to it easily, but the Victorian commercial district is only two blocks long, and the streets in the area of the bluff are quiet. It’s a good place to visit in October, when there are no crowds and fog rolls in from the sound.

Coupeville

Coupeville was established back in the 1850s when sea captains and farmers made their way to settle the sheltered shores of Penn Cove, located on Whidbey Island. It is Washington’s second-oldest town, and the waterfront is very much as it used to be a hundred years ago: old 19th-century storefronts on Front Street, Coupeville Wharf reaching into the cove, farmland at the edge of town. The area is part of the Ebey’s Landing National Historical Reserve, a 17,000-acre preserve preventing any commercial development from appearing in the viewshed. That means working farms are within a few minutes of the wharf.

Visit in spring or fall to skip the crowds who make the pilgrimage for Practical Magic, the 1998 Sandra Bullock film shot partly on Whidbey Island.

Roslyn

Roslyn is a small community east of the Cascades, above Cle Elum, and it has been a National Historic District since 1978. Founded in 1886 by the Northern Pacific Railroad, it was built to provide coal for their locomotives, with immigrants coming from various parts of Europe to work there. The evidence of that immigration is found mostly in the cemetery, where there are 26 distinct sections, one for each fraternal organization representing a particular ethnicity of immigrant. It’s perhaps one of the more distinctive historical artifacts found in Washington, and it’s just sitting there on a hillside outside of town.

The brick downtown is intact. The Brick, a saloon that opened in 1889, is the oldest continually operated bar in Washington and still retains its original running water spittoon. There is a trail that leads from Roslyn, the Coal Mines Trail, through the old workings. You’ve probably seen the exteriors on Northern Exposure, but the true history is the one about the coal and immigration, and the Roslyn Historical Museum covers it well.

Steilacoom

Most travelers pass through Steilacoom as they head for the ferry to Anderson Island, not stopping long enough to notice what they’re driving past. Steilacoom was made into the first incorporated town in Washington Territory in 1854, 35 years before statehood, with structures dating from this time period both standing and being used. The church was built in 1855 and is the oldest in Washington State.

It is located approximately 40 miles south of Seattle, on the shorelines of Pierce County. It’s within an afternoon’s drive of the city, but the roads are usually empty. The Tribal Cultural Center at the 1903 Congregational Church describes the history of the Steilacoom Indians, who inhabited the area long before the first ferry service arrived.

Port Gamble

In 1853, the Puget Mill Company established Port Gamble, a New England-style company town along the Hood Canal whose inhabitants operated the sawmill for 142 years until its closing in 1995. At the time of closure, the town left behind an almost untouched Victorian-era street scene since there was no need for anyone to tear down and reconstruct the buildings. The white clapboard houses, wide lawns, church, and general store, operating out of the same building since the 1850s, give it the quality of a place that forgot to continue. The town is a National Historic Landmark.

Port Gamble is about an hour drive from Seattle through the Kingston ferry route, making it an accessible destination as a day-trip without having to plan for a full tour of the Olympic Peninsula. There is the Port Gamble Historic Museum in the former general store, covering the company town in detail. It’s a good complement to a road trip down to Poulsbo or up to the Hood Canal bridge.

Oysterville

Oysterville is located at the very end of the Long Beach Peninsula of Willapa Bay, and reaching it can be quite an endeavor. You have to drive all the way to the end of the peninsula, which narrows to about a quarter mile wide, through cranberry bogs and oyster operations, before you can reach the small grouping of 19th-century structures. There is absolutely no through traffic, and little anywhere else to go once you get there.

Oysterville was founded in 1854 by Robert Hamilton Espy and Isaac Clark. It was briefly the county seat for Pacific County, but once the native oysters were depleted, everyone left. The majority of the original structures are still standing, including the 1892 church and schoolhouse. The Oysterville Historic District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the town is well worth the drive if you find yourself on the Long Beach Peninsula.

Dayton

Dayton is in Columbia County in the very southernmost part of the state, 30 miles north of Walla Walla, and it holds two records no other Washington town can claim. The 1881 Dayton Depot is the oldest surviving railroad depot in Washington State.

The Columbia County Courthouse, built in 1887, is the oldest operational courthouse in Washington. These landmarks are both in outstanding condition. There are 117 historic buildings on the National Register in Dayton, located in three historic districts. They are a testimony to the era of prosperity in the 1880s and 1890s, when wealthy farmers erected their homes in Italianate and Queen Anne style.

The shift to dryland wheat farming stabilized the economy without generating the growth that would have required tearing things down. That’s why so much survived. Dayton is not a tourist destination like Walla Walla, although it is just close enough for a day trip and a night at the Weinhard Hotel, a restored Victorian inn located in the historic district, if you want to spend more time in the region.

Liberty

Liberty is Washington’s oldest continually occupied mining community, located east of Cle Elum in the Swauk Mining District with a population of about twelve. Gold was discovered in Swauk Creek in 1873, the community boomed and busted in the years that followed, but it survived as a result of a few families staying on and continuing to work the claims. Its 1890s structures are listed in the National Register of Historic Places and the mining equipment can be found scattered throughout the location.

Swauk Creek’s gold panning is legal with just a prospecting permit, so Liberty stands out as a historic site in that you can participate in the activity that created it. The road in is tough, with no services available, and you won’t see any interpretive signs either. That’s the point.

Stehekin

There is no road to Stehekin. You get there through the ferry from Chelan on a four-hour journey or 75 minutes for the fast ferry called the Lady Express. You can also get there via floatplane or by walking in from the Cascade Crest. There are around 85 residents, no traffic lights, no chain businesses, and limited cell service. The original log cabins and the one-room school that belonged to the first settlement period are still intact, and the surrounding terrain, the Stehekin River Valley and the North Cascades above, is some of the most dramatic in the state. A one-day trip is possible, but rushed, so you may want to consider staying overnight. Accommodation and meals are provided by the Stehekin Valley Ranch.

Metaline Falls

Metaline Falls is located in the far northeast corner of Washington state in the county of Pend Oreille, roughly 80 miles north of Spokane and close to the Canadian border. The town reached its peak in terms of mining and logging around the first part of the 20th century and has been steadily maintaining its form ever since then.

Immediately to the north lie the Selkirk Mountains, with the Pend Oreille River flowing beneath, and the closest city lies far away in all directions. Gardner Cave in Crawford State Park, 11 miles to the north, is the second largest limestone cave in Washington state. Whether on your way around the International Selkirk Loop or not, it requires some forethought to get here, which is largely why it still looks like it does.

The Washington Hotel, built in 1910, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is currently open as an inn. The Cutter Theatre, dating back to 1912, was designed by Kirtland Cutter, the same architect who built the Davenport Hotel in Spokane. Now, it’s a school turned community arts center with a rural schools museum inside. Both buildings are the product of an early-century mining-town construction that was never replaced because there was no reason to replace it.