Port Crescent, Clallam County, Washington, is a historic ghost town today. Once a booming timber port in the late 1800s, today all that’s left is a small cemetery situated in a popular camping ground. 

This was once a thriving community with railroad cars brought huge logs to this deep-water port. Port Crescent flourished briefly as an industrial hub thanks to this deep harbor and proximity to timber-rich land. In its day, the town boasted a hotel, general store, post office, sawmills and even a dance hall. When the Northern Pacific Railroad bypassed the town, the place slowly dwindled and eventually it was abandoned………. all except those resting in the historic cemetery.

This town figures into my family tree:  my son, Benjamin, married Vera in Port Angeles. She was a descendant of Emanuel Wasankari, born 1862 in Finland. He and his brother, August, born 1856, also in Finland, immigrated to Clallam County before statehood (1889). August arranged for Kindricka Pudilla to come from Finland to marry her and had a license dated 8 Jun 1889. But on the day her ship arrived, August was ill and Emanuel met her at the Port Crescent dock….. and promptly married her on June 20th!  Poor dear August never married.