Another piece of Port Townsend history, gone

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I always look forward to the Rhododendron Festival every year. A time when the town can get together and have fun. The parade brings out a good crowd, with our royalty, bands floats from other cities, etc. Also events like the bed race.

I always try to get to see the royalty handprints pressed into a cement slab for a remembrance of the current and past years. 

A friend who works downtown was concerned. The crew chopping up the sidewalk for installing new ones, was getting close to the handprints that have been set in the sidewalk for years. I love to see tourists stopping to look at the prints and years, learning a little bit of town history.

I walked downtown after the work had stopped to see what was happening around the handprints. They all seemed to be there, and one slab had been removed from its place all intact. Maybe they could work around them and keep the handprints intact.

I went down this evening (April 26) to see how far they had gotten on that part of the project. There were some of the handprint slabs, one on top of a pile, it had about one-quarter gone. Others had damage. Right near the barrier fence I found a small piece of concrete that had four letters faintly carved. It was four letters of the word “festival.”

It’s too bad that for some reason, the handprints could not be saved. I wish I could have gotten a picture of the broken handprint slabs. One thing that made me sad is that if the Rhody handprints had to be removed, why did the removal have to be scheduled just a couple of weeks before the Rhody festival starts. Another piece of Port Townsend history, gone.