Director's Farewell
Museum Director, Greg Hagge
Says Farewell
Greg Hagge, Director of the Coast Artillery Museum shares his history and reflects on his experience at the museum. As Director, he has put his heart and soul into the museum. As the museum closes he and the other Board Members will take a well deserved rest!
Thanks Greg for all of your years you put into the museum!
Greg Hagge statement on museum closing
Opening; closing Puget Sound Coast Artillery Museum
Greg Hagge is the first (1985) and last (2026) Director of the Puget Sound Coast Artillery Museum located in Building 201 at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, WA. Coast Artillery veterans formed a museum association in 1976; the first actual facility opened in 1985, a year after Hagge arrived. Here’s Greg’s story, in his own words:
At the time I was a college intern, returning to college a second time as a young vet on the GI Bill. I was interning with Washington State Parks and introduced to Stan Lillian, the historian for the 248th Coast Artillery Association who was trying to get a museum going at Fort Worden State Park.
In 1985, Building 201 was offered up for this purpose. At the time it was basically abandoned, being used for Centrum Mule Barn Storage and being picked over by maintenance for spare parts for other buildings.
My dad, Obie Hagge, helped me build the facility; he was a good carpenter, highway engineer and WW II vet. We scraped together showcases, artifacts from the 248th Coast Artillery Regiment, my personal items and working with Dick Clifton, then Chief of Interpretive Services for State Parks, some objects from the parks’ collection. This was always an all-volunteer effort.
At age 30, I was living in the back of Building 201 and scraping by on the meager donation jar for all museum expenses and beans and bacon, as the old vets put it. I had no idea the museum would be continued for the next 41 years through the efforts of the original 248th and 14th vets. As they aged and passed away some of their children (most being very young in the 1930s-40s) took up the project. In turn other Port Townsend retirees, mostly old vets themselves, continued on.
Alfred Chiswell came to Port Townsend in 2001 and soon became the ramrod for the next decade, building the museum’s assets and programs expanding CAM into what we have had into recent times.
I retired from the U.S. Army Museum System in 2014 and returned to Port Townsend. In 2016 I rejoined the CAM Board (I knew Alfred from way back) and in 2017, when Alfred retired, became CAM’s leader again. Now, in 2026, I am the Board President and Museum Director who it falls to close the final chapter of an amazing institution that I established 41 years ago.