Engineering Tacoma's Waterfront
Tacoma will build a $20,000 bridge to its new filled waterfront, where teredo worms eat untreated pilings.
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.
A new bridge is to be built to span a portion of the Northern Pacific track between Pacific avenue and a point just south of Brown's wharf. The bridge will connect Pacific avenue with that portion of the water front which the land company has filled in at a cost of $100,000. The bridge will cost upwards of $20,000. The piling the land company is using is being treated for teredo worms, as the previous pilings were not teredo-proof. Several of the pilings from the old Puyallup river channel were capped, and in some cases, the bottom of the pile, which was not coated, was consumed and honeycombed by the worms in as little as eight to eighteen months.
“In some cases, the bottom of the pile, which was not coated, was consumed and honeycombed by the worms in as little as eight to eighteen months.”
This infrastructure struggle—battling nature to build over the water—is a literal foundation of Seattle and Tacoma’s urban history. The ongoing expense of maintaining waterfront transit continues to shape the civic budget to this day.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.