Until today I didn’t know that Port Orchard had a boardwalk! Our family went to Port Orchard to give my dear husband a chance to look at old nicknacks (ummm I mean go through antique malls). But dear daughter and I stretched our legs and found this boardwalk, with real boards and a lovely, lovely view. We walked it to the end, which took under 10 minutes.

It turns out that the City of Port Orchard has some big plans for this little boardwalk. It is to be expanded to the Annapolis ferry facility and become part of the Mosquito Fleet Trail.

The Mosquito Fleet Trail Master Plan states “Mosquito Fleet In the year 1908 twenty-four docks provided passenger and goods transport between Kingston and Southworth along the eastern shoreline of the Kitsap Peninsula. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 1908) The Mosquito Fleet derives its name from the ubiquity of the small steamboats that carried passengers between these docks and across the Puget Sound as common as mosquitoes buzzing through the air. Historians attribute the beginning of the Mosquito Fleet to the year 1853, when the Fairy began service between Olympia and Seattle (Clark, p. 48). At the turn of the century, numerous lines competed against each other, vying for both passengers and goods. The emergence of the automobile had disastrous effects on the Mosquito Fleet. By the mid-1930’s only the Black Ball Line survived. In 1951, Captain Peabody sold what remained of his fleet to the State of Washington, officially ending the era of the Mosquito Fleet.”

http://www.cityofportorchard.us/mosquito-fleet-trail

http://www.kitsapgov.com/mosquito/downloadplan.htm

http://www.kitsapgov.com/mosquito/pdf/mosquito_fleet_plan.pdf