A long flight of stairs (see photo) that connects Oyster Bay Court to Kitsap Way might be one of Bremerton’s least known, and least used, shortcuts. Located just behind the Family Pancake House, the stairs have been there for years, possibly decades. Although I have ridden by the upper entrance hundreds of times on my bike, it was only last week that I stopped to take a closer look.
In all there are 71 stairs, built primarily in groups of three, with longer flat concrete platforms in between. A rusty old metal railing flanks one side of the uppermost stairs; at the bottom the railing is newer and appears to be a replacement. The steps are lightly covered by moss and leaves, not so much as to make them unsafe, but enough to telegraph a lack of winter maintenance.
The ascent is gradual with an elevation gain of about 40 feet over a lineal distance of about 250 feet. It’s an easy climb.
If you wanted to walk from the stairway’s bottom entrance on Oyster Bay Court to the top using Bremerton city streets, it would take a brisk 10 minutes to cover the half-mile distance. It wouldn’t be an easy walk either due to a lack of sidewalks until you get to Marine Drive. And it would be best to know the way to avoid any wrong turns through the Lower Marine Drive neighborhood as you would be taking five different streets.
I measured the half-mile driving distance with my Subaru’s odometer. My estimate of the stairway’s walking length of 250 feet is just that, an estimate. But if it’s close that means the distance ratio of stairway to streets is about 1 to 10, an overall savings of around 90 percent. Except for bridges, most shortcuts don’t save that much distance.
So, suppose you decided to take the stairs up to Kitsap Way instead of driving. What awaits you as a walker at the top assuming your mission is more than getting some exercise? That part of Kitsap Way has about a dozen places to eat, from fast food franchises to fancier restaurants. There’s also a Starbucks if you need a coffee fix and a couple of vaping stores. As far as retail there’s a Walgreens, an Ace Hardware, the R&H Market, and Kitsap County’s nicest store—Arnold’s Home Furnishing. You could also renew your car tabs, meet with a real estate agent, do laundry, browse auto parts, visit a Verizon store, and copy & mail correspondence. All that and a lot more, but curiously no banks.
By contrast, the area around the bottom of the stairs is residential, primarily single family houses plus the Bay Pointe Retirement Community. It’s not the kind of neighborhood that produces a lot of walkers, although it’s quite possible locals know the stairs exist. But whether many people in the Lower Marine Drive area use them to walk up to Kitsap Way is an open question.
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