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Just looked it up and found this from 2009 Kitsap Sun Newspaper in Bremerton. There are FOUR carriers there now.

BREMERTON, WA - Kitsap Sun

It's not often that you can snap four aircraft carriers in a single frame, but that's the scene from Port Orchard.

Moored along the Bremerton shoreline are the retiring Kitty Hawk (CV 63) and decommissioned Ranger (CV 61), Independence (CV 62) and Constellation (CV 64). When the USS John C. Stennis isn't patrolling the oceans, it's there with them.

Locals don't pay the old flattops much mind as they drive past on Navy Yard Highway. But the city-block-sized flattops turn the heads of visitors like the Samuels.

Samuel Samuel of Seattle said his family wanted to take a ferry ride Friday. Pulling into Bremerton, they glimpsed the Navy ships and decided to drive to the Missouri gate for a closer look.

"We're here just to have some fun," said Samuel, whose brother Fa Samuel is visiting from American Samoa and videotaped the sight. "It's so good to see the ships.

" Another carrier quartet — USS Enterprise, USS Eisenhower, USS Theodore Roosevelt and USS Harry S. Truman — is based at Norfolk Naval Station, but they're active and rarely, if ever, seen together.

The Ranger, Independence and Constellation are decommissioned and are part of Puget Sound Naval Shipyard's Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility — more commonly known as the mothball fleet. Removed from the Naval Vessel Register, they can become museum ships, artificial reefs or be dismantled, said Kathleen Roberts, [URL]spokeswoman for Naval Sea Systems Command.

The Navy's fleet of inactive ships has declined by more than two-thirds nationwide in the past decade, and it's no different here. There were 13 ships in Bremerton in 1999, so many that some had to be tied up to buoys in Sinclair Inlet. Five years ago there were 10, and now just seven, four of them aircraft carriers.

After decommissioning in September 1998, Independence remained mothballed until being struck from the register in March 2004. It had been heavily stripped, with pieces of the old carrier being recycled for use in active carriers. That makes it a poor candidate to become a museum ship. It is scheduled to be dismantled within the next four years, along with Constellation, although it remains available for donation as a reef until a contract to dismantle it is awarded.

The Constellation was decommissioned in August 2003, towed here the next month and stricken in December. The two ships are in Reserve Category X, meaning they get no maintenance or preservation, only security against fire and flooding.

Joining them in Bremerton's shrinking mothball fleet are the guided-missile frigates Sides and George Philip and the guided-missile cruiser Vincennes, Roberts said. The frigates were going to be sold to the Portuguese navy and then to the Turkish navy, but both deals fell through. The Vincennes is slated for scrapping within the next four years.

Ranger, though the oldest of the three carriers, still has a shot at becoming a museum. Tacoma had been interested. Now Portland, Ore., wants it as a naval and aerospace museum, educational center, and a setting for special events. The USS Ranger Foundation is [/URL]trying to raise $100,000 to complete an application to the Navy, according to its Web site. Because Ranger could be donated as a museum, it is getting more care than the other carriers, including protection from rust and humidity.

Kitty Hawk, which arrived in September, will be decommissioned in the spring after its replacement, USS George H.W. Bush, completes sea trials and is delivered. It will be placed in "Out of Commission, In Reserve" status, said Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown, a Naval Air Forces spokesman. It will be inactive but remain on the Naval Vessel Register to possibly return someday. That rarely happens, though Iowa-class battleships were reactivated and modernized in the mid-1980s.

It costs the Navy about $200,000 a year to maintain an inactive carrier, Robertson said.

None of the four carriers are available for tours. Removal of equipment and materials for recycling can make moving around the ships dangerous for civilians.

The Vietnam War was the glory days for Bremerton's four inactive carriers. Built between 1957 and 1961, they were in their prime during the war in Southeast Asia. The 50-year-old ships stuck around long enough to fight in the Middle East. Now they rest.