Keyport, Washington

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Keyport, Washington
Aerial view of Keyport and Olympic Peninsula facing west from Port Orchard Bay.jpg
Aerial view of Keyport looking west from Port Orchard Bay
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Keyport
Location in Washington and the United States
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Keyport
Keyport (the United States)
Coordinates: 47°42′8″N122°37′27″W / 47.70222°N 122.62417°W / 47.70222; -122.62417
Country United States
State Washington
County Kitsap
Area
  Total0.70 sq mi (1.81 km2)
  Land0.49 sq mi (1.27 km2)
  Water0.21 sq mi (0.54 km2)
Elevation
35 ft (11 m)
Population
 (2010)
  Total554
  Density1,126/sq mi (434.9/km2)
Time zone UTC-8 (Pacific (PST))
  Summer (DST) UTC-7 (PDT)
ZIP code
98345
Area code 360
FIPS code 53-35625
GNIS feature ID1505963 [1]

Keyport is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) located in Kitsap County, Washington, United States. Situated at the eastern terminus of State Route 308 on the Kitsap Peninsula, Keyport is known for its small population and charming coastal setting. According to the 2010 census, the Keyport CDP had a total population of 554 residents. [2]

Contents

The community of Keyport was named after Keyport, New Jersey, in 1896. [3] Its nickname is "Torpedo Town USA". Situated on a small peninsula jutting into Liberty Bay near Poulsbo, it is the home of a small United States Navy depot tasked with ranging and repairing torpedoes for the US Navy and allies.

Keyport Bible Church, which was established in the early 1900s and incorporated in 1926, stands as the sole church in Keyport. The church's building was dedicated on May 2, 1937, and has since undergone expansions, including the addition of classrooms and a multipurpose building. [4]

Military bases

From its early days, prior to World War I, the naval station in Keyport, Washington, underwent several name changes. Initially known as the Pacific Torpedo Station and later as the Naval Torpedo Station, it eventually became the Naval Undersea Warfare Engineering Station (NUWES) in the 1990s. The land the base sits on was originally a pig farm, which led to some interesting nicknames in the base's early years.

As the Cold War drew to a close, a number of budget cuts, two RIFs and several Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) actions caused Keyport's parent command in Newport, Rhode Island, to reserve the engineering function to itself, at least on paper, resulting in a name change to Naval Undersea Warfare Center - Division Keyport. One of many subsequent reorganizations resulted in another name change to Naval Sea Systems Command, Keyport (NAVSEA).

Following the current trend of aligning base names with their localities, the current name of the station is Naval Base Kitsap – Keyport, similar to the other facilities in Bremerton and Bangor. However, the tenant commands, NAVSEA and NUWC, have remained unchanged. Keyport survived all these threats without closing its gates, but the civilian workforce at Keyport has fallen from about 3,500 personnel in 1990 to 1,348 in 2005.

Tourism

Keyport's major tourist facility is the Naval Undersea Museum which exhibits many displays on undersea technology, including the bathyscaphe Trieste II, which descended to 20,000 feet (6,100 m). There is also a boat dock operated by the local Port Authority. Kitsap County maintains a small county park on the beach just across SR-308 from the main gate.

Within the base itself, visitors can enjoy amenities such as a boat launch, a park, a spacious picnic area situated on a lagoon, and several hiking trails on "Radio Hill," which are commonly utilized by base employees during their lunch breaks. However, recreational boaters are cautioned to maintain a minimum distance of 300 feet (91 m) from the base's production area.

Cleanup

Like many American bases, the Navy base at Keyport is designated a Superfund site, with four areas requiring action due to chemical contamination, including the former landfill on the western edge of the installation with the potential to contaminate neighboring well water. The chemicals of concern are chlorinated aliphatic hydrocarbons (CAHs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Treatment for CAH hot spots in the landfill is by phytoremediation (growing poplar trees). Other treatments are the removal of PCB-contaminated sediments, upgrading the tide gate, upgrading and maintaining the landfill cover and conducting long-term monitoring.

Climate

This region experiences warm (but not hot) and dry summers, with no average monthly temperatures above 71.6 °F. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Keyport has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate, abbreviated "Csb" on climate maps. [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Naval Undersea Warfare Center</span> Warfare Center of the U.S. Navy

The Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) is the United States Navy's full-spectrum research, development, test and evaluation, engineering and fleet support center for submarines, autonomous underwater systems, and offensive and defensive weapons systems associated with undersea warfare. It is one of the corporate laboratories of the Naval Sea Systems Command. NUWC is headquartered in Newport, Rhode Island and has two major subordinate activities: Division Newport and Division Keyport in Keyport, Washington. NUWC also controls the Fox Island facility and Gould Island. It employs more than 4,400 civilian and military personnel, with budgets over $1 billion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Naval Base Kitsap</span> U.S. Navy base located on the Kitsap Peninsula in Washington state


Naval Base Kitsap is a U.S. Navy base located on the Kitsap Peninsula in Washington state, created in 2004 by merging the former Naval Station Bremerton with Naval Submarine Base Bangor. It is the home base for the Navy’s fleet throughout West Puget Sound, provides base operating services, support for both surface ships and fleet ballistic missile and other nuclear submarines as one of the U.S. Navy's four nuclear shipyards, one of two strategic nuclear weapons facilities, and the only West Coast dry dock capable of handling a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier and the Navy's largest fuel depot. Naval Base Kitsap is the third-largest Navy base in the U.S. The base has a workforce of 15,601 active duty personnel.

USS <i>Connecticut</i> (SSN-22) Submarine of the United States

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hansville, Washington</span> Census-designated place in Washington, United States

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Washington State Route 308</span> Highway in Washington

State Route 308 (SR 308) is a 3.42-mile-long (5.50 km) state highway in the U.S. state of Washington, serving the community of Keyport in Kitsap County. The highway travels generally east from an interchange with SR 3 east of Naval Base Kitsap at Bangor to the main entrance of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Keyport. SR 308 was codified as the Keyport branch of State Road 21 in 1929 and continued as the Keyport branch of Primary State Highway 21 (PSH 21) in 1937. During the 1964 highway renumbering, the branch became a section of SR 303, which ran from Bremerton to Bangor and had a spur route serving Keyport. SR 308 was established in 1971 along the old route of SR 303 Spur and was extended in 1991 to the SR 3 freeway after SR 303 was re-routed onto a new freeway in Silverdale.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">United States Naval Undersea Museum</span> Naval museum

The United States Naval Undersea Museum is a naval museum located at Keyport, Washington. It is one of the 10 Navy museums that are operated by the Naval History & Heritage Command. It sits next to a branch of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">United States Navy torpedo retrievers</span> Naval vessels that retrieve training munitions

United States Navy submarines, surface ships, and aircraft launch torpedoes, missiles, and autonomous undersea vehicles as part of training exercises. Typically, these training munitions have no warhead and are recovered from the sea and reused. Similarly, new naval weapons under development are launched at sea in performance trials. These experimental units also need to be recovered, in their case to obtain evaluation data. At various points in history, newly manufactured torpedoes were fired as a quality control measure and these, too, had to be recovered before issuing them to the fleet. The U.S. Navy has used a variety of boats to accomplish the retrieval of these test and training munitions. As their missions evolved over the last century they have been variously known as torpedo retrievers, torpedo weapon retrievers, torpedo recovery boats, range support craft, and multi-purpose craft.

References

  1. "Keyport". Geographic Names Information System . United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior.
  2. "Geographic Identifiers: 2010 Census Summary File 1 (G001), Keyport CDP, Washington". American FactFinder. U.S. Census Bureau. Archived from the original on February 13, 2020. Retrieved June 28, 2019.
  3. Meany, Edmond S. (1923). Origin of Washington geographic names. Seattle: University of Washington Press. p. 129.
  4. "Keyport Bible Church" . Retrieved February 6, 2014.
  5. Climate Summary for Keyport, Washington