June 30th, 2011
Eureka!
(Sorry. I just felt a great need to say that. Ahem.)
I stopped in Eureka, CA for a cuppa after my sojourn in the nearby redwoods, and was charmed in a heartbeat. Thanks to its obvious proximity to timber, Eureka is chock-a-block with fancy Victorian and Art Deco architecture. And by stumbling upon a book in a shop downtown that day, I discovered it’s not the only town on the Redwood coast that can make that claim. Since one of them was only a few miles back the way I’d come, I turned right around and headed back up the valley to Ferndale.
Nicknamed the “Cream City,” Ferndale had its heyday in the 1880s, when the area’s prosperous dairy farms provided much of the wealth that built the town. These affluent farmers built ornate and sumptuous homes there—which the locals called “Butterfat Palaces.”
Right away I could see why—when I got to stay in one.
The next morning, after an early breakfast, I took a stroll around town.
As seemed to be a running theme for my trip, I had the place to myself. The only sounds I heard were mourning doves and lowing cattle—and the early morning glow bathed the buildings in sunlight.
Ferndale is a tiny town; if you add up all its historic buildings you might get three or four city blocks. But the place is worth its weight in butter when it comes to the details.
I mean, come on! Just look at that pink door! (I want a pink door on my house!)
It’s the details that actually played a large part in saving the place from destruction and “urban renewal.” After a series of devastating floods in the mid-20th century, the buildings on main street were slated for demolition. That is, until a local resident bought up every threatened building, then painted them in outrageous Victorian colors—essentially creating the tourist draw the place enjoys today.
I probably could have stared at egg-and-dart cornices all day, but then I turned a corner, and stopped dead in my tracks.
But before I go on, I have to provide a little back story.
The Tailor and I have a tradition of putting together a jigsaw puzzle on New Year’s Day (riveting pastime, I know, but we love it)—we’re always raiding thrift stores in search of the next puzzle. This year’s was an image of an ornate victorian house, in some town I’d never heard of.
Well, when I turned that corner, I was absolutely gobsmacked to discover it was the jigsaw puzzle house!
I knew I couldn’t possibly be mistaken—after all, when you reconstruct a building from 1000 pieces of cardboard, you start to memorize the details.
So I plonked myself down on the curb, and started jotting down some of those details in my sketchbook. After all—why settle for a jigsaw puzzle when I had the real thing before me?
May 9th, 2010
Today was just begging for a Sunday drive, Mother’s Day crowds be darned, so the Tailor and I moseyed up to another of my favorite haunts: Port Townsend.
Port Townsend is located on the northeastern tip of the Olympic Peninsula (close on a map to but in reality very far from Cape Flattery) and guards Admiralty Inlet, where Puget Sound ends and the Straits of Juan de Fuca begin. It’s practically within shouting distance of Canada on one side (you can just make out the line of Vancouver Island along the horizon here), and lava-spewing range of Mt. Baker on another.
These days it’s a sleepy, semi-tourist town (thankfully it’s remote enough that it’s often possible to go without being mobbed by teeming hordes), home to both artists and seagulls, but at one time this place was hoppin’.
Its location made it an ideal military, trade, and shipping hub; Port Townsend was a prosperous and well-established seaport by the 1870s—nearly twenty years before Washington became a state. The town’s early boom afforded it a lavish and significant array of Victorian architecture—and once shipping fell out of favor there, its failure to develop a replacement industry (see above: remote) proved to be an accidental blessing of historical preservation. As a result, Port Townsend has an astonishing collection of Victorian houses and commercial buildings, and is one of only three seaports on the National Register of Historic Places.
Beyond the architecture (which, don’t get me wrong, is the stuff of my dreams), what I love about this place is how lived-in it feels. It’s not a stage set, or an overgrown museum, like so many historic towns I’ve seen. Port Townsend feels comfortable, inviting, and absolutely real.
It reminds me of places like Durango, Colorado; Stillwater, Minnesota; Salem, Massachusetts—all places that have taken up permanent residency in my heart. Places with real, breathing history and still-current ordinary life.
And I’m not even biased by the New England-authentic jimmies-coated ice cream cone I stumbled upon today—though the pitch-perfect nostalgia of my favorite childhood treat favorite-thing-in-the-whole-wide-world (which really can’t be found west of the Hudson, at least not completely slathered like this, and for which I nevertheless search tirelessly) made me happier than I can say.
Ahem. I digress. Big time. Port Townsend has one more beauty up its sleeve—although as it’s not on the beaten path, it’s easy to miss. The tippy-tip of the town’s little peninsula is occupied by Fort Worden, formerly an army installation (1890s to 1953) and now a state park. The gub’mint knew what it was doing with this one—they picked one of the loveliest and most strategically important chunks of real estate in the Pacific Northwest. I’m sure glad it belongs to all of us now—I think it’s better for flying kites than cannonballs anyway.
Fort Worden’s best feature, and the perfect climax to a day in Port Townsend, is Point Wilson Light, the tallest lighthouse on the Sound. This is one of my favorite spots to sit and watch the world go by, and today’s date reminded me that while we didn’t get to it on her recent visit, this is one spot that I think my mum would love, too.
Happy Mother’s Day, everyone! (And happy birthday, Dad!)
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