Fort Worden State Park, Military state park in Port Townsend, United States.
Fort Worden State Park covers 175 hectares on a bluff at the northern tip of the Quimper Peninsula, directly adjoining Port Townsend. Point Wilson, at its northeast corner, separates the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Admiralty Inlet, and the park has three kilometres of coastline. Artillery Hill rises over 70 metres, and concrete gun emplacements and bunkers, partly overgrown with trees and shrubs, remain open to visitors.
Fort Worden was built from the 1890s onward together with Fort Casey and Fort Flagler as a coastal defense system guarding the entrance to Puget Sound, protecting Seattle, Tacoma, Everett and the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton. It served as a coastal fort and training camp until it was abandoned in 1953. Washington State bought the site on 1 July 1957 and ran a home for delinquent youths in the buildings until 1971; in 1973 the grounds passed to the state parks commission, and the park and conference center opened on 18 August 1973.
The former fort commander's house, completed in 1904, now serves as a museum showing the furnished quarters of a senior officer's family in the late Victorian era. The Puget Sound Coast Artillery Museum, founded in 1976 by coast artillery veterans, displays uniforms, maps, models and photographs of the Puget Sound defenses. The Friends of Fort Worden run the souvenir shop in the visitor center, housed in the former guardhouse.
The park has two campgrounds: Beach Campground at Point Wilson and an upper wooded campground, together offering 80 sites. The visitor center, with a souvenir shop run by the Friends of Fort Worden, occupies the former guardhouse. Eighteen kilometers of foot and bike paths cross the park, and kayaks, bicycles and tennis equipment can be rented inside it.
A lighthouse named Point Wilson stands within the park boundaries, serving as a landmark for vessels in the bay. This location was part of a three-fort defense system with two other fortifications that worked together to monitor the region.
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