The Milwaukee Railway's Massive Industrial Expansion
A quarter-million-dollar contract aims to connect Old Town to the city's industrial waterfront, signaling heavy infrastructure growth.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
J. H. Brace Co. of Seattle were yesterday awarded the contract by the Milwaukee railway for the building of the Front street roadbed from Old Town to the smelter. The company will furnish all materials, the contractors simply doing the work. The entire work will be on piling, there being over 4,000 piles to be driven. It will take over 2,000 feet of lumber to cover the piling, as the company will build a street for the city 30 feet wide, in addition to the roadbed for its own tracks. The entire job, including the docks near the North End mill, at which the car ferry will receive and discharge ore, will probably cost $250,000.
“The entire job... will probably cost $250,000.”
This project exemplifies the aggressive early-20th-century development that cemented Tacoma as a manufacturing and shipping hub. Much of this industrial infrastructure is what current waterfront redevelopment projects are now tasked with repurposing or mitigating.
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