PORT TOWNSEND — It’s not just for history buffs. A newly published photographic history book of Jefferson County will delight anyone in the county who has the slightest curiosity to see how the North Olympic Peninsula’s oldest county formed from meager beginnings.
The 127-page book, Images of America: Jefferson County, was put together by the Jefferson County Historical Society from a collection of more than 20,000 historical photographs gathered over the years.
“It’s easy for all ages to look through it and take something different,” said Marsha Moratti, Jefferson County Historical Society museum coordinator.
Not only does it provide rich and interesting black-and-white photographs of people and moments passed, but also gives contextual significance through brief captions of each picture.
“There’s a lot of meat in the text of the captions,” said Bill Tennent, director of the Jefferson County Historical Society.
“It’s not just a picture book.”
Key role
Moratti spearheaded the project that took more than a year to complete.
She played a key role in deciding what photographs to include and how to arrange them to best tell Jefferson County’s story.
The book has seven chapters: “In the Beginning,” “From Far Away,” “Victorian Seaport,” “Forts,” “Ports, Bays and Islands,” Farms and Forests’ and “The Wilds and the West.”
“It was really hard to narrow it down because we have such a great collection of photographs,” said Moratti.
“We wanted to represent the whole county.”
