Prairie Line 1929

In 1929, the Northern Pacific Railroad systematically photographed the conditions along their right of ways in Tacoma and for a moment in time the Prairie Line was frozen in visual memory.

The photographs and numbered notes recorded the details that mattered to the railroad but the images and observations also captured the busy patterns of workday activity and architecture that was both fleeting and lasting. Its wonderful today to see so much that remains and contributes to the University of Washington Tacoma campus and surrounding neighborhood. Its also fascinating to see the lost pieces of the landscape-the vehicles, signs, wires and people that have vanished in the 90 years since these photos were made.

In the 1920’s Union Station was only a decade old and its location had dramatically changed the daily routines in the warehouse district. In the early years, Tacoma’s main passenger depot and arrival point was on the Prairie Line just above where it crossed Pacific Avenue. The hotels, ethnic organizations, restaurants and taverns that catered to the various nationalities of newcomers were along Jefferson where the Swiss Hall, Carlton Hotel(German), Massasoit Hotel(French/Swiss), Buddhist Temple (Japanese) and other establishments ringed the Northern Pacific Depot. They created a multinational edge to the warehouse district and supplied a workforce that spoke the universal language of heavy lifting, boxcar loading and hard earned wages.

When these photos were taken, the passenger traffic had moved across Pacific Avenue to the grand Beaux Arts station and the warehouse district was left to the daily business of railroad freight cars, delivery trucks and the tangle of overhead telephone wires and water tanks. At night, the heavy work of the locomotives played out as loaded and empty boxcars were moved in out of the district. During the day shifts, the trucks and wagons took over, loading small, mixed cargoes of goods and perishables for delivery to retailers and smaller communities all over the region.

So here is the window into a point in time, into Tacoma’s Prairie Line during the early 1920’s…..

Prairie Line crossing Pacific Avenue

This remarkable collection is from the Jim Fredrickson Collection at the Pacific Northwest Railroad Archive:    http://www.gn-npjointarchive.org/default.aspx