Port Townsend, WA

This wooden structure is the last remaining wooden fire bell tower in the United States. Built in 1890 to house a brass bell and the city’s fire engine, it is located on the corner of Jefferson and Tyler Street in the uptown section of Port Townsend.

The bell would alert the community to a fire. It also provided a coded signal which gave the fire’s location and the severity of the blaze. A year before the tower’s construction, fire alarm boxes were installed around the city. When someone activated the alarm box, an indicator device in the City Hall fire station would receive the notice and its 14-inch brass bell rang in a timed pattern individualized for each alarm box. The indicator unit decoded the signal and displayed the specific alarm box number. Firefighters, arriving at the hall, would check the number and respond to the location of the fire. The City Hall indicator device then transmitted the coded location of the pull-box alarm to the fire bell tower and a firefighter would select the number of times the bell ringer would cycle the coded signal, indicating a one, two or three alarm fire, thereby alerting the city to the fire.

The tower was restored in 2003 by the Jefferson County Historical Society and the City of Port Townsend. In 2004, the Washington State Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation awarded it the State Historic Preservation Officer’s Award for Resource Stewardship.

Today, the historic Bell Tower Park provides scenic vistas of Admiralty Inlet and Port Townsend Bay, which are at the eastern end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.