The City Moves Dirt: Tacoma’s Infrastructure Expansion
Crews begin work on a significant new sluicing line to clear debris from the U.P. tunnel, doubling down on civil works to connect the city grid.
The city is today starting on a new pipe line that will give plenty of water for sluicing the dirt through the pipe at the U.P. tunnel. Superintendent Whitney was busy all morning preparing plans and collecting material for a big pipe line. The little four-inch pipe laid in the first place was utterly inadequate and this time a big one will be used, running from 18 inches down to 10 inches at the outlet. It will extend from station A to the tunnel portal and will be fed by the dams in the gulch by gravity. There will be a head of from 22 to 35 feet, according to the figures of the water department. It is thought this will be sufficient to start the dirt in the sluice pipe on its trip down to Pacific avenue. City Electrician Lauson was also called down to the tunnel by the contractors this morning to prepare plans for lighting the tunnel and for furnishing power for motors inside.
“The little four-inch pipe laid in the first place was utterly inadequate and this time a big one will be used.”
Tacoma’s early 20th-century obsession with regrading and tunnel infrastructure defined the physical layout of downtown we experience today. These massive public works projects often required radical earth-moving, forever altering the topography of the city's waterfront and hillsides.
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