Fort Townsend State Park

The park has great walking trails, a botanical trail and a historical trail. We liked the location but the sites are tiny and close together. We stayed two nights, noisy neighbors one night but no neighbors the next.

Fort Townsend S.P., Jefferson Co., WA. Imagine it's a beautiful weekend in October, and you know this is your last possible chance of camping for the year. So you get some friends together, rent the group campground at Fort Townsend S.P., then wait for night to fall. You begin to tell ghost stories, just as sounds start to squeal from the old Torpedo Tower sitting just above your campfire... Then you sense movement, more shrieks (all pre-arranged with your immature guy friends), the ghost story gets more intense... then several pairs of wet camping clothes. God I love the outdoors. For more info, contact http://campeverycountywa.com/jefferson-county.html

I can't really make any sense of the one other review for this campground so I'm leaving one of my own. We arrived on a Sunday afternoon to find only two other campsites taken. We chose site 24 as it was spacious. There are several large fields as well as shoreline access via a trail. Note that mosquitos were out in full force. I have a feeling this park serves as overflow for Ft Worden and probably gets very busy in summer. Completely deserted during our stay in mid-May and we'd definitely come back. $30 seemed a little steep for a site with no hookups. We paid via a paybox and never saw a ranger during our two days there. There was a sign posted indicating which campsites were available but the sign was over 5 days old.

August 1-3, 2018
We arrived a day early and were pleasantly surprised to find an available campsite - 25. It was nice, with plenty of space. The next day we moved to 24, our reserved site, which is even nicer with more space. The restrooms are clean. There are some nice hiking trails right from the campground. You can also walk down to the beach. The campsites are all fairly spacious and separated by plenty of greenery, so you barely notice your neighbors. There are no hookups, so it got quiet early in the evening. The only thing I didn't like were the mosquitoes, but a bit of bug spray seemed to do the trick.

There is a kiosk where you pay via envelope. There is supposed to be a ranger for a few hours a day there, but we were not around to verify. If you need to speak to a ranger, you can find them maintaining the grounds.

We spent one night here on our way to Deception Pass. The RV sites have no services and are very, very close together. Our neighbor was very nice but the people two sites away ran their ancient generator from morning until night.

The park itself is pretty nice with large grassy fields. There is also a network of hiking trails through the forest.

We only stayed one night because it’s not a hook up site. But other then that it’s very nice and quite. And incredibly friendly staff.

Campsite so close together. They must have knocked out the greenery that was mentioned in the other reviews. Our dogs on a 6 foot leash tied to our van would have been in the other campsite. My son was following in a car and planned to rent camp but there was no room for his one man tent. Neighbors were rude. We had to leave. The trails might be nice for day use.

This is a nice campground although there are actually two. The first is for larger sized rigs and appears to be a bit too crowded. We stayed at the second campground, up a hill and into the woods. The road to this campground is narrow and winding and the park limits the size of vehicles/trailers to 21 feet. Once there you are rewarded by nicely spaced and wooded campsites. The bathrooms and showers are well maintained and clean with showers needed a token to operate. For me two tokens for $1 was enough. Nice water views of Puget Sound and we were able to see Mt Baker and Mt Rainer. Cost is expensive at $50 for dry camping, or $37 for the site plus $5 nonresident fee and $8 web reservation fee.

This 367-acre marine camping park features 3,960 feet of saltwater shoreline on Port Townsend Bay. The heavily wooded park has a rich military history dating from pioneer days. The park occupies more than a third of the original Fort Townsend built in 1856 by the U.S. Army for the protection of settlers. Timbers were hewn and laths cut from local forests. The fort was closed between 1859 and 1874, declared "unfit" after an inspection by an army headquarters commander from Columbia. Reopened in 1874, the fort thrived until 1895 when fire destroyed the barracks. The property was used as an enemy-munitions defusing station during World War II. State Parks took custody of the premises in 1953.

Great park with beach access and hiking trails. Close to town but you would never notice. Very busy in the summer and RV sites reservations are recommended