In 1905 the best and fastest way to get around Puget Sound was by passenger ferry. Before buses or automobiles, good old steam got you from Tacoma to Seattle in about 90 minutes. If you were coming from Shelton, you had the adventure of making a mid channel transfer from the steamer Simpson to the graceful Greyhound. It was decades before ground transportation could match the predictable schedules of the mosquito fleet between major cities and for smaller communities we still don’t come close.
For exhilaration, there was no substitute for the Flyer, a legendary, knife hulled steam cutter that made four trips a day between Tacoma and Seattle.When the prevailing Southwesterly summer winds were blowing she could make the Seattle trip in 70 minutes and on certain cold wintry days when the Northerlies were fierce, the Flyer could pull into Municipal Dock from Seattle in under an hour. Then we decided ferries had to carry cars and the whole ballet fell out of step.
tacoma history 