PORT TOWNSEND — While public access to the new Jefferson County Research Center building is not yet allowed, visitors to the original facility already have seen an improvement.

The front room of the center at 13692 Airport Cutoff Road, which once was jammed with shelves and offered limited seating, is now wide open, with several spacious tables.

All the files and reference material that were in the center prior to the construction are still available.

However, they are housed in the new building, which is next door, and can be requested for retrieval by a staff member.

The Jefferson County Genealogical Society has also been given more space, in a corner of the reading room of the existing building.

The genealogical society plans to hold an open house for its new space at noon Saturday.

An open house for the new building has not been scheduled.

It will take place after all the artifacts have been moved in, said Bill Tennent, director of the Jefferson County Historical Society, which operates the research center.

While all the artifacts will be moved into the new building by the end of the year, Tennent said the grand opening celebration will probably wait until the spring.

The original research center opened in 2003 in a converted church and was quickly filled to capacity with research materials SEmD and researchers, according to the society’s website, www.jchsmuseum.org.

There are about a half-million documents, 20,000 photographs and 15,000 artifacts.

Available to the public, this documentation of the history of Jefferson County includes records dealing with births through deaths, with church, land, census, maritime and other information in between.

Written, video and audio oral histories are in the collection.

Grants and private donations funded the new $1.6 million, 7,800-square-foot, two-story building.

The outside has a no-frills corrugated metal finish while the inside is a modern, climate-controlled environment especially designed to preserve the museum’s collection.

Larger items such as an old hearse will be stored on the first floor, which also contains a loading dock that provides an air-lock-style opening, where artifacts can be fumigated so that pests don’t threaten the entire collection.

Many of the artifacts were stored at Fort Worden State Park, where they may have attracted pests, and have been transferred to the Museum & Arts Center in the Sequim-Dungeness Valley, where they are currently stored at freezing temperatures.

Once they are thawed and are returned to the research center, the pests will be gone, Tennent said.

The new building provides an unprecedented resource for a rural area, Tennent said.

“When people come here they will be amazed,” he said.

“No county of 30,000 people has a facility like this one.”

The research center is usually open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., except the third Saturday of the month, when hours are noon to 4 p.m.

It is closed the last two weeks of December.

Weather can affect operations, so phone 360-379-6673.

Admission is $4 for adults, $1 for children younger than 12 and free for historical society members.

Jefferson County students are admitted free by prior arrangement.

For information on the historical society, see www.jchsmuseum.org.

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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.