Page 64 - Family History

Family Stories

Story of the Court House Moving

It is not generally known to people arriving here in recent years that the county
seat has not been at all times in Port Angeles.

Prior to the year 1890 the seat of government of this county was at Dungeness,
not the Dungeness of the present time but one that has wholly vanished from the
map. Passing to the west of the present place of that name along the road on the
bluff about a mile you arrive at a turn to the south. This point is the location of
what, prior to the year 1890, was the metropolis of Clallam County.

There were at that time two hotels with the usual appurtenances, a large general
store, one or two other mercantile emporiums, a telegraph office, a church and a
ramshackle building referred to as a court house, with a population of
something less than a hundred people.

Port Angeles, which had languished for many years, suddenly came to life in
the year 1887 and rapidly increased in population to the extent that in the year
1890 it considerably outnumbered all of the remainder of the county. It then
occurred to the enterprising citizens of Port Angeles that the financial benefit of
having the county seat located here would be a good thing. They were, however,

anticipated by a group of real estate speculators who had become interested in
Port Crescent, [another vanished metropolis] as a rival of Port Angeles and an
aspirant for a railway terminus. These people filed a petition for an election
authorizing the removal of the county seat to Port Crescent. An election was
accordingly held and there was an overwhelming majority in favor of Port

Angeles.

It might be remarked, in passing, that Port Angeles broke into this matter by
some sort of political burglary and not at all in conformity to the statute in
such cases made and provided. However, this is all ancient history.

The vote was duly canvassed, the result announced, and it was solemnly
th
declared that Port Angeles was the county seat from Monday, November 10 ,
1890. Thereafter some three or four days elapsed and there seemed to be some

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