Tacoma Builds a Waterfront for the China Trade
The Northern Pacific begins rock walls, warehouses and wharves to capture trans-Pacific commerce—and a flour mill is already following.
TACOMA, April 23.—The Northern Pacific Railroad began work today on water-front improvements intended to prepare for an increased Oriental trade. It will build a solid rock-and-stone wall along its water-front property, four freight warehouses and bunkers with large storage capacity, and extend the front line of the wharves twenty feet out. Piling is to begin tomorrow. The Oatmeal Company is also preparing to erect a flour mill for the Oriental trade.
“The railroad is preparing for an increased Oriental business.”
Tacoma’s 1895 gamble on trans-Pacific trade is an ancestor of the Port of Tacoma and the region’s export economy. The same questions—whose infrastructure, whose trade, whose waterfront—still shape redevelopment along Commencement Bay.
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