PORT ANGELES — We’re inside Outside.
The outdoor magazine that sponsored the online “Best Town Ever” contest has published its cover story on the nationwide competition in which Port Angeles finished No. 2 — just behind Chattanooga, Tenn., nearly 10 times its size.
“Port Angeles isn’t big, but as this year’s ‘Best Towns’ showing demonstrates, it can compete with just about anyplace,” the magazine said.
Only a few copies of Outside’s September issue remained for sale Wednesday afternoon at Port Book and News, 104 E. First St.
It chronicles the city’s outdoor attractions; notes its demographic mix of retirees, outdoor enthusiasts and blue-collar wage earners; and tells how a grass-roots group boosted the town nearly to the top of the 64-city competition.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: See related story today about a second story in the magazine on outfitters: “Brown’s Outdoor — ‘best outfitter’ — says Outside contest created newfound pride among Port Angeles merchants” — https://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20150820/NEWS/308209992 )
Charlie Comstock, member services manager of the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce, said it was hard to tell if the contest to date had drawn more visitors to Port Angeles.
However, he said comments on the Outside website reflected surprise by outsiders at the area’s beauty. And the contest boosted residents’ appreciation for where they live.
“We have noted an uptick in the attitude of the locals,” Comstock said, “an awareness that you’re not just living here, you’re experiencing the nature of the Northwest. It alerted them to the fact that we have a treasure.”
Carol Sinton, an active member of Revitalize Port Angeles, the group that helped lead the push for the city to be voted Best Town Ever, thought the magazine article was just fine — “but, of course, it would take more than one page to really do Port Angeles and the Olympic National Park justice.
“The contest itself,” Sinton added, “really pulled our town together, and that in itself was the real win.”
Another Revitalize member, Iris Sutcliffe, got a Facebook message and a photo from a friend in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Tuesday.
The friend was reading the “Port Angeles, Washington” article in Outside while riding the subway across New York City.
“Hello from the F Train,” Sutcliffe’s friend wrote.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock in some other national park, you know about Port Angeles’ performance in the magazine’s online contest in May and early June.
One of four last-minute wild-card entries, Port Angeles — rallied by the Revitalize Port Angeles Facebook group — won five rounds in a 64-city “March Madness”-style elimination before facing Chattanooga, the Southern Division winner and the winner of Outside’s annual contest in 2011.
The contest seemed mismatched — Port Angeles, with a population of 19,000, up against the Tennessee city of 170,000.
Chattanooga won. But Port Angeles garnered more than three times its population in votes against the Southern city and took second place, plus the contest’s Western Division crown.
To reach the finals, fans of Port Angeles outpolled Santa Barbara, Calif.; Bainbridge Island in Kitsap County; Glenwood Springs, Colo.; Flagstaff, Ariz.; and Bar Harbor, Maine.
Signs urging residents to vote for their town went up on business readerboards, windows and restaurant tables as organizations ranging from the Chamber of Commerce to Black Ball Ferry Line promoted voting.
Gov. Jay Inslee backed Port Angeles, as did the Sequim-bred Emblem3 band. U.S. Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray and Rep. Derek Kilmer — a Port Angeles native — tweeted their support. Western Washington University called for votes on its Facebook page, and the Seahawks urged people to cast ballots for Port Angeles.
The contest was a public relations coup.
People posted comments on the Outside website promising to visit after seeing photographs of the area’s natural beauty and Olympic National Park, to which Port Angeles is the gateway town.
In a poignant consequence of the competition, Port Angeles sent a score of sympathy and support banners to its Tennessee rival after a gunman killed four Marines and a Navy sailor in a Chattanooga military center July 16.
Leslie Robertson, the founder of Revitalize Port Angeles, delivered the condolences July 30.
The banners, signed by hundreds of residents at locations throughout Port Angeles, cemented a bond that came out of the Outside contest between the town on the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the city on the Tennessee River
During the “Best Town Ever” final match-up, Port Angeles gathered 62,130 online votes to Chattanooga’s 67,432, bowing by 48 percent to 52 percent but capturing more than its share of national attention
Here’s part of what Outside said in its story:
“In the final throes of this year’s contest, Port Angeles staged an impressive fight. Homeowners put placards in their yards reminding passersby to vote, businesses made pleas on sandwich boards, and locals stood on street corners with signs. . . .
“The message was clear. ‘We love this town, and this community can really pull together,’ says Jacob Oppelt, owner of Next Door Gastropub [who visited Chattanooga at the height of the balloting to boost Port Angeles]. . . .
“Port Angeles is a gateway to Olympic National Park. Because of the dramatic relief —the peaks rise to over 5,000 feet within a few miles of the coast — the area hosts diverse ecosystems, including alpine environments studded with lakes, ultragreen old-growth forests threaded with whitewater rivers, and bays that harbor orcas and steelhead.
“’I call it the holy land,’ says John Gussman, a local photographer. ‘We don’t have smog or traffic, and we have this beautiful million-acre wilderness in the backyard.’
“Not surprisingly, the local culture is built on an appreciation of the outdoors, and the economy is boosted by adventure travelers. It’s not uncommon to see surfers toting boards through town or cars stuffed with gear for forays into the park. More recently, mountain bikers have arrived to ride the burly downhill trails in the 600,000-acre national forest.
“But Port Angeles isn’t your typical bro experience.
“There’s a healthy population of retirees — the town’s average age is 42 — and a strong blue-collar flavor.
“The town lumberyard sits near the sea-kayak put-in, there’s an active boat-building industry, and commercial fishing for halibut and Dungeness crab is a mainstay.
“These industries infuse the town with a grittier feel than artsy neighbor Port Townsend and sleepy nearby retirement community Sequim. But they also help keep home prices reasonable—the median is $201,000—and engender a live-and-let-live ethos.”
To read the full story, see http://tinyurl.com/PDN-Outsidefinalists.
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Publisher and Editor John Brewer can be reached at 360-417-3500 or jbrewer@peninsuladailynews.com.
Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
