A Shaking Coast: Earthquake Strikes Port Townsend
Residents of the seaside town were startled late Wednesday night by a sharp, twenty-second seismic tremor.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
About twenty minutes to eleven last night, a sharp shock of earthquake was felt here in Port Townsend. It lasted about twenty seconds. The vibrations seemed to travel from north to south. The lighthouse tender Shubrick arrived here today, and the bark Norfolk, which loaded lumber at Tacoma, sailed for Valparaiso.
“About twenty minutes to eleven last night a sharp shock of earthquake was felt here.”
Seismic events have long defined life in the Pacific Northwest, with residents of Port Townsend remaining just as attentive to tremors today as they were in 1882. While the 1882 quake was a brief scare, it serves as an early recorded entry in the long history of geological awareness in the region.
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