A Colossal Smoke Stack Rises Above Old Town
A 75-foot steel incinerator aims to finally quell a fire that has smoldered for years at the local mill.
In a week, the mammoth refuse burner at the Old Town mill will be completed and the fire started within its enclosure. The fifteenth course of sheet steel is now in place and the laying of the firebrick lining, which will extend 75 feet above the ground, is going on. This burner is 45 feet in diameter and will be 100 feet in height. The company is anxiously looking forward to its completion, so that the old pit, where a fire has been burning continuously for several years, will be done away with. The bark and waste material will be carried to the top of the new burner and dumped into the enclosed space by means of an elevator similar to the one now in use.
“The old pit, where a fire has been burning continuously for several years, will be done away with.”
Old Town Tacoma was the original site of the city's industrial development. The 'burners' were iconic, ubiquitous structures of the timber-boom era, representing the immense scale of waste generated by the mills that built the city.
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