Marrowstone Point, Admiralty Inlet

Marrowstone Point, Admiralty Inlet

by | Sep 17, 2023

Marrowstone Point is a low broad spit on the north shore of Marrowstone Island that marks the entrance to Port Townsend Bay from Admiralty Inlet, about 38 miles (61 km) north-northwest of Seattle and 3 miles (4.8 km) southeast of Port Townsend, Washington. Captain George Vancouver of the Royal Navy named the point in 1792, noting in his log that the cliff behind the point was composed mostly of a whitish hardened clay called “marrowstone”.

In 1888, the U.S. Lighthouse Service built a post lantern on Marrowstone Point to mark the shoals, dangerous rocks, and heavy rip-tides at the entrance to the main shipping channel for Puget Sound. The light was tended by a contract lightkeeper who rowed to the point every few days to polish the lens, trim the wick, and replenish the fuel supply. On February 3, 1918, a new electric white light was installed at a height of 28 feet (45 m) from the top of a small cement building, the smallest lighthouse on Puget Sound.

In 1974, The Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service acquired the Marrowstone Point Light Station from the Coast Guard for use as a fisheries research center. The first laboratory facilities were constructed in 1976. In the early 1990s, the U.S. Geological Survey, Biological Resources Division inherited the Marrowstone Marine Field Station and invested approximately $40 million in new construction and in remodeling the facility. Read more here and here. Explore more of Marrowstone Point here:

About the background graphic

This ‘warming stripe’ graphic is a visual representation of the change in global temperature from 1850 (top) to 2022 (bottom). Each stripe represents the average global temperature for one year. The average temperature from 1971-2000 is set as the boundary between blue and red. The color scale goes from -0.7°C to +0.7°C. The data are from the UK Met Office HadCRUT4.6 dataset. 

Credit: Professor Ed Hawkins (University of Reading). Click here for more information about the #warmingstripes.

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