Lost cities of the Strait: Port Crescent

Okay, the use of the term "cities" might be a bit of a stretch in this case, but I've found myself increasingly fascinated by a few forgotten coastal settlements along the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  Most of these were, I would guess, associated with logging in an era when moving logs overland was an impossibility.  Some were quite small, but others were impressively large communities...that have now more or less completely disappeared.  Port Crescent, for example, was an impressively large coastal community on Crescent Bay along the Strait of Juan de Fuca, supposedly envisioned originally as a big ship port.

Here is a view of part of town from 1905, looking to the east from a point on the current road leading down to Crescent Beach:

1905 view of Port Crescent.  Photo from the Burt Kellogg collection, North Olympic Library System

and here is the view from the same point today:

8 June 2020 photo looking east towards Crescent Bay

In the far field of both photos is Tongue Point, site of Salt Creek County Park, and where Fort Hayden was built during WWII.  Because of trees and shrubs it is sort of hard to make out the shoreline in the near field of the modern view.  Here is a modern view of approximately where the large hotel and wharf would have been:

Photo taken 8 June 2020 approximately here, approximately where the large wharf and hotel sat in the 1905 photo above.  

Barely a trace of the extensive turn-of-the-century development associated with this town is visible.

Fort Hayden, now Salt Creek County Park

Salt Creek County Park in Clallam County is an absolute gem - a beautiful and heavily-used park where a lush second growth forest merges with a spectacular coast.  It also, like some of our other park gems scattered around the eastern Strait of Juan de Fuca (i.e. Fort Worden, Fort Ebey, Fort Casey and Fort Flagler), was once part of the Puget Sound Harbor Defense System, the initial three fort core of which is described here.  What was known at the time as Fort Hayden was a relatively late addition to the system, constructed at the onset of WWII, and decommissioned at the end of the war.  Walking around the grounds now speaks to the changes and transformations of uses of the coast that this blog is all about.

One of two 16-inch guns firing at Camp Hayden, probably in the early 1940's.  Photo from the Burt Kellogg collection, hosted by the North Olympic Library System.

The same perspective, photo collected 27 May 2020.