I love this view of the Foss Waterway under the 11th Street Bridge. All the way to the Tacoma Dome is an area of industry, filled with trains, highways, ramps, and bridges, and on the water, boats of every kind. Note that while the surface of the water is horizontal, the 11th Street Bridge isn’t. it was built with a lift span which opened for tall ships and a street to move people and goods from the tidal flats of the port across rail tracks and warehouses to the residential uplands of the city. This was quite a feat of engineering in 1913.
Between the Dome and the 11th Street Bridge is the cable-stayed East 21st Street Bridge, which has four lanes and was completed in 1997 to carry State Road 509. Riding my bike across the Dock Street Bridge, I look back at Morning Light moored at Dock Street Marina on the left. Behind me are rows of freight rails, the aging green wooden warehouses alongside the tracks where Amtrak passengers alight and disembark, the Dome, and I-5.
This paragraph on a historic marker along the walkway got my attention. In the 1870s and 80s, business elites of Port Townsend were covering the hills with houses in ever more fanciful Victorian styles as they anticipated the arrival of the railroad! Meanwhile, people in Tacoma were shoring up the lowlands and laying rails to build a port and Thea Foss was growing her fleet, rowboat by rowboat.
A cruise to Tacoma is a fitting historic antidote to our aptly named City of Dreams.
Mount Tahoma calls us toward its namesake city and we leave Port Townsend Bay.
At our approach to Commencement Bay, clouds sneak up around the peak making Mount Tahoma look as if it’s already blown it top off.
We turn into Thea Foss Waterway, where an old wooden wharf has been filled with modern apartments. The white building above it is the old, Elks Temple now McMinamins Elks Hotel. We wow a visit. Filled with eateries, bars, and welcoming weirdness, it does not disappoint.
Next we pass Foss Waterway Seaport Maritime Museum, one of the American Cruise ships is taking on provisions
At the end of the Waterway, we tie up at Dock Street Marina, where there’s always been a spot for our off season visits to the big city. At the top of the ramp we turn right onto the Thea Foss Esplanade.
Under the 11th Street Bridge is a curious mural featuring a typewriter and these words: The saltwater that laps the pilings of the waterfront opens onto the oceans of the World. Ah, I get it now – the typewriter commemorates Murray Morgan! As a young man in the 1940s, he served as bridge tender, raising and lowering the bridge to let large vessels and tall ships pass. In 1997 the bridge was officially renamed for this journalist-historian-activist who authored Puget’s Sound, about the early days of Tacoma, and Skid Row, about 1940s Seattle.
Around the corner, the mural pays homage to the bold and remarkable Thea Foss. Her life illustrates where fixing up an old boat can lead. As a mom with a bunch of kids, she salvaged an old rowboat, fixed it up, rented it out, used the proceeds to buy another boat, and on and on to build Foss Maritime.
A short a break in the Esplanade at the bridge forces rollers onto the uneven ground, so instead we turn take the ramps up and over the Glass museum.
We head over the pedestrian bridge that shows of the work of Tacoma glass artist Dale Chihuly.
Where the glass walls light up the space during the day, it’s at night that Chilhuly’s glass sea creatures in the ceiling light up to show the way.
The Bridge of Glass continues over the busy rail line, which today stands in for half a dozen parallel railway lines located on steps up the slope to the business district.
Contemporary Tacoma continues to pay homage to the steps that take you into town. These surround a triangular square in the Museum District. All of these institutions are within a five minute walk: Tacoma Art Museum, the Childen’s Museum, the Museum of Glass, and the Washington State History Museum. (Except for the State museum, all are free with a NARM/ROAM card associated with your Jefferson County Historical Society membership.)
This April in Tacoma we headed up into the city to explore what is actully called “Downtown”A steep street up from the Museum District is the Commerce St Station, where a vast system of busses and light rail takes you all over the region. We got day passes with our ORCA cards. One day we bussed through the old neighborhoods to visit the zoo on Pierce Transit. Another we we took light rail up to Hilltop. Between Amtrak at the Dome and St. Joseph’s hospital, lie ten more stations on the Sound Transit’s T-Line.
To get to town from the water, climb over the Museum of Glass or take the elevator during the day. 
Here’s the view of the cone at night when the glass studio is fired up and people are working. 
You can circle the glass studio on the balcony for a quick look or take the theatre seating, watch closely, ask questions, and follow the process. 
We happened to sit next to the father of a glassblower . 
The 16-year old was producing objects for the museum shop, designing new works, and leading her own team. 
She calmly led her team in a dance of coordination and timing. 
The Chiluly Bridge and the views from it are special at night. 
Lamps of glass pillows light the way. To the right is the Washington State History Museum. 
The history museum echoes the shape of the old Union Station, which is now a U.S. Courthouse with a lobby full of colorful glass. 
Across Pacific Avenue from the history museum is the Univeristy of Washington’s Tacoma campus. 
Head up the steps or ramps to see this stunning campus that opened in 1990. 
The tracks, the RR crossing signs, the stately red brick warehouses do justice to the early 20th century version of the city. 
The buildings along the stepped beds of what was once a huge railway yard work brilliantly for an urban campus. 
Tacoma’s UW campus is both spacious and compact. 
Signage documents each building’s history. The public art is inventive and welcoming. 
By the time you have crossed several pedestrian streets that once carried rail cars, you arrive at UW Tacoma’s west entrance high above the water below. 
When you visit Tacoma, don’t drive there! Arrive by water or rail. The Amtrak station is in this old wooden building a stone’s throw from the Thea Foss Waterway.
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