Since its earliest days, Tacoma’s ports shipped boatloads of coal. Better yet, make that thousands of shiploads destined for buyers as far as Hawaii plus up and down the Pacific Coast. While most King County coal was shipped from Seattle, the Pierce County coal mines of Wilkeson, Carbonado, Burnett, Spiketon, and Montezuma marketed their coal through the port of Tacoma.
There was a simple reason for the divide. Before 1900, railroads carried almost all the coal as highway vehicles had not yet been developed and barges weren’t feasible in the area’s rivers. Pierce County’s mines were served by the Northern Pacific Railroad which chose Tacoma as the western coast terminus of its transcontinental rail line. In response, Seattle built its own railroad, the Columbia & Puget Sound that ended up hauling coal from the Newcastle, Renton, Black Diamond, and Franklin mines to port facilities located on Seattle’s waterfront.
In this 1885 photo, the three-masted ship, Eldorado is being loaded at the Northern Pacific Railroad’s old shipping facilities that projected into Tacoma’s Commencement Bay. A locomotive pulling a load of coal cars can be seen on the tracks to the right of the ship. In 1883, N.P. completed this 528-foot railroad trestle to two large offshore coal bunkers. The coal bunkers, as they were known, were completed at a cost of $250,000, a huge sum of money at that time. They were considered to be the most modern of their type on the Pacific Coast. By 1901, coal exports rose to a high of 633,979 tons per year.
This photo #TPL-1076 comes courtesy of the Northwest Room of the Tacoma Public Library. Photo enhancements were performed by Andy Newell of Mancraft Graphics, a copy and print shop located in Black Diamond: https://www.mancraftgraphics.com/
