On the Waterfront at the Chehalis River - South Aberdeen, Washington

Chehalis River basin (based on USGS National Map data, from Wikimedia Commons)

The Chehalis River drains a broad area of western Washington's coastal hills and lowlands. This was an immensely rich timber area from the late-1800s to the mid-20th century. Logs were floated down the river in vast quantities to timber mills and processing companies along the riverfront between Aberdeen and South Aberdeen. 

2004 aerial photograph of South Aberdeen, with the Chehalis River in the foreground

This is a view from 2004, when a friend flew me from Olympia to the coast. In 2004, the waterfront just to the right of the highway bridge was occupied by a mill and lumber storage. Today, the Grays Harbor Historical Seaport occupies at least one building, and a roof truss company is in another.   

Chehalis River view east or upriver

For over a century, State and national agencies proposed to convert the lower stretch of the Chehalis River into a canal between Grays Harbor and Olympia. The project floated around for at least a century, but was never funded. Considering the environmental impact and cost, we are unlikely to ever see this idea again.  

The Lady Washington sometimes moors here at the historical seaport. It is a replica brigantine launched in 1989.

Concrete building of unknown purpose

I need to return and explore the Chehalis River waterfront in more detail.

Fun viewing at Rte 107 and Minkler Road

Further upriver in South Montesano, a collector has some interesting old trucks and a Studebaker Lark in his yard. The Lark was a decent car for the early-1960s, but it was not successful enough to save the company.  

Never-finished Satsop nuclear power plant

Continue upriver, and you reach the astonishing concrete monoliths that were once intended to become the Satsop nuclear power plant units WNP-3 and WNP-5. The State of Washington intended to build five nuclear power plants. One was completed and went into operation. The other four were bogged down with massive cost overruns, managerial failures, incompetence, and technical changes. In 1983, the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS), better known as "Whoops," became the biggest municipal bond default of all-times. 

Today, two monumental cooling towers loom over the valley at Satsop. The incomplete containment buildings look like brutalism architecture run extreme. When our society collapses and we lose history records, future residents of the valley will look at these monoliths and wonder if aliens or the gods built them. What were they for? Were they religious structures? Is a King buried beneath?

I plan to return to the site. It is not quite an urban decay topic. These things will not decay; they are too strong. The concrete will harden for centuries, millennia. But they are grotesque.

The black and white photographs above are Kodak Tri-X 400 from my Fuji GW690II camera, the "Texas Leica," with a 5-element Fujinon 90mm ƒ/3.5 lens. Praus Productions in Rochester, NY, developed the film in Xtol.

On the Waterfront at the Wishkah River - Aberdeen, Washington

Grays Harbor, map generated from https://graysharborwa.mapgeo.io/datasets

Geologic Setting

Aberdeen is a seaport at the east end of Grays Harbor, an estuary on the Pacific coast of the Olympic Peninsula. Grays Harbor is one of three major estuaries on Washington's Pacific coast. Willapa Bay, south of Grays Harbor, is the second, and the lower Columbia River is the third. Grays Harbor (with no apostrophe) was named after Captain Robert Gray, who entered the bay in 1792 during one of his  fur-trading voyages along the north Pacific coast of North America. 

An estuary is an embayment or river mouth that experiences mixing of salt and fresh water. Grays Harbor is an excellent example, because the tide enters the Pacific mouth of the bay and mixes with fresh water from the Chehalis, Wishkah, Hoquiam, and Humptulips Rivers. Sediments and flora reflect this mixing of waters. Marshes often form in brackish water.  

Puget Sound is a much larger geological feature in the Washington coast and is classified as a sound. Some of the river mouths and embayments that enter the sound, like Budd Inlet here in Olympia, can be considered small esturaries, but none of these are as extensive features as Grays Harbor, Willapa, or the Columbia River.   

Grays Harbor, Willapa Bay, and the Columbia River were dangerous entrances during the sailing era. Hundreds of vessels floundered in the waves and the treacherous sand banks, especially in winter. This is why Puget Sound was such an amazing resource. It provided calm water that did not freeze in winter. Sailing vessels could escape from the rough Pacific Ocean into relatively sheltered water. Seattle is one of the great natural harbors of the world (along with Victoria (Hong Kong), Sydney, New York, Busan, Rio de Janeiro, Halifax, and others).   

Aberdeen 2004 (Hasselblad Xpan Panoramic camera)

Aberdeen

Aberdeen was once one of the largest timber processing and shipping ports on the Pacific coast. Timber companies floated vast amounts of lumber down the Chehalis River to numerous mills along the waterfront.  The city expanded greatly in the 1920's when lumber exports grew in response to factors like the opening of the Panama Canal and the earthquake in Tokyo, which resulted in fires that burned much of the city. 

Aberdeen had a tumultuous history of union organizing, epic labor strife, criminal syndicates, violence, murder, and Communist organizing. This is fascinating stuff, but this history well beyond the scope here.

The photograph above is a 2004 aerial view of South Aberdeen in the foreground and downtown Aberdeen in the distance. The Chehalis River flows from left to right in the foreground and then curves left and flows towards the open water of Grays Harbor. I took this with a Hasselblad XPan panoramic camera from my friend's cloth airplane. 

Wishkah River

The Wishkah River is a tributary of the Chehalis. It drains a wooded and mountainous region of Grays Harbor country north of Aberdeen. It flows south through Aberdeen, with some old bridges and interesting infrastructure. The photos below are of the downtown area along the Wishkah.

East Wishkah Street lift bridge

This is the type of bridge that pivots up. You can see the counterweights hanging from the frame on the opposite side of the river. 

Wishkah River and the old Northern Pacific Railroad swing bridge

Pilings and debris, Wishkah River

South F Street

Northern Pacific swing bridge

I could not find much information about this bridge. It is unusual for swing bridges because the pivot is at the edge of the channel. Only one side projects over the water. The electric light is on, but I do not know if the bridge can swing. Freight trains cross it regularly. A sign said no trespassing, but plenty of homeless people cross. Someone may even live in the turret under the central pivot. 

Junction where swing bridge meets fixed track

I like these complicated pieces of early 20th century industrial infrastructure. This was massive construction, but I am sure it needs a lot of maintenance now.  

A homeless tent community occupies East River Street. While I was taking pictures, a few of them walked by and were very polite. Do they live here in winter? It would be pretty grim with the long wet nights and cold wind blowing in from Grays Harbor. 

I took these photographs on Kodak Tri-X 400 film with my "Texas Leica," the Fuji GW690II camera with a 90mm ƒ/3.5 Fujinon lens. Praus Productions in Rochester, New York, developed the film in Xtol.

Ugly Industrial Remains: the Olympia Brewery (Oly 15)

Olympia Brewing Company was a major industrial employer in Olympia for over 100 years. Leopold Schmidt founded the company in 1896 at the base of the Deschutes River, at the southern end of the West Bay inlet (now upriver from Capital Lake). The company survived Prohibition my making juice. After Prohibition ended, the company expanded to a more modern factory further upriver in the town of Tumwater. 

BreweryGems offers a summery of the company's early years. 

For over half a century, Olympia Beer was a popular regional brand. It was not exactly a gourmet product, but it sold well in the pre-micro-brew era. 

Trouble came in the 1980s. Various corporate buyouts and mergers ruined the company, and in 2003, SABMiller closed the Tumwater facility permanently. A fire damaged part of the complex in 2018. Today, these ugly warehouses and buildings sit unused and partly vandalized.

Original Olympia brewhouse with the Deschutes River in the foreground (Hasselblad 80mm lens)

The former brewery occupies two locations. The old brick buildings from the original site are just north of Tumwater Falls facing the Deschutes River (see the first photograph). The site has access via only one road, whose the gate has ominous warning signs about video surveillance and trespassing. The only view now is from the Tumwater Historical Park across the river.

The second site is south of the falls on the flat floodplain of the Deschutes River. As you approach Olympia from southern Washington on Interstate 5, ugly tan block-like industrial buildings mar the view. These are the remains of the Tumwater part of the complex. The best view is from Capital Boulevard SE, which was formerly Rte 99. The bridge crosses over railroad tracks and walkways that once connected the buildings. The following photographs are from the bridge.

Warehouses with Deschutes River in foreground (Fuji Acros film, 21mm ƒ/4.5 Biogon lens)

Railroad tracks approached from the south to a long warehouse complex. It is unused now. 

Former power plant (21mm Biogon lens)

(Kodak T400CN film, Leica IIIC camera, 5 cm ƒ/2 Summiter lens)

August 20, 2024, Kodak Panatomic-X, Hasselblad 501CM, 80mm ƒ/2.8 Planar-CB lens, yellow filter  

Panatomic-X film, 250mm ƒ/5.6 Sonnar lens, YG filter

This mess of concrete, tracks, and sheds is the scene looking south from the Capital Blvd. bridge. Cross the busy roadway and look north, and you see office building and other parts of the former brewery. 

Semi-modern 1960s architecture. Capital Blvd. is to the right.

The Tumwater site is secure and locked. A security guard in a silver car drove around the day I took these photographs. You can see his car in the photo above. We waved at each other. 

Rail line that leads to the lower brew buildings and on to Olympia

One day, I would like to take some ground level photos of the site. An employee of the city of Tumwater sent me a contact, but I have not called yet. This kind of industrial setting interests me and offers photographic opportunities with graphic patterns and shapes.

Most of the photographs above are on Fuji Acros film from my Leica M2. The light was harsh, and the negatives are too contrasty. I need to remember to avoid the harsh mid-summer. My new Zeiss 21mm ƒ/4.5 Biogon lens (for Leica M mount) provides superb resolution. With a lens this wide, you need to be careful to avoid converging vertical lines. I need more practice.

   

Small Towns in Washington: Shelton

Shelton is the westernmost city in Puget Sound. It is northwest of Olympia at the western end of Oakland Bay. Travelers taking US 101 north to Port Townsend or Port Angeles at the north side of the Olympia Peninsula would pass right by Shelton. 

In the early-mid 20th century, Shelton's economy included logging, farming, dairying, ranching, and oyster cultivation. Logging was the heavy industry, and the Simpson Timber Company operated a mill complex at the waterfront of Oakland Bay. Formerly, trains carried logs out onto a man-made peninsula, where they were dumped into the bay. From there, tugboats moved log booms to other processing centers and mills, such as the huge mill in Everett. 

Frontier Antiques, S. First Street, Shelton

Bob's Tavern, S. First Street, Shelton

South First Street carries a lot of traffic, but the stores did not look too prosperous.

Rail yard off S. First Street with mill complex in the distance

Timber rail cars off S. First Street

From Google Maps, I could see the remnant of the lumber dump at the waterfront. But I could not personally get to the waterfront because it was it was part of the Sierra Pacific Industries work yard. Only employees were allowed in past security. 

Boathouse, Oakland Bay Marine

This was a rather frustrating visit because I could not reach the industrial waterfront. And the June sky was brilliantly clear but featureless (boring). But Shelton will be worth further exploring. Not far away, the High Steel Bridge over the south fork of the Skokomish River will be worth a visit. 

Dear readers, you know where this is going. What do you do after a few hours exploring and photographing? Well, that's obvious, go to the Cabin Tavern to eat Fish 'n Chips and drink cider. 

Post-photography health food at the Cabin Tavern, Shelton

Don't do it in the water

I took the black and white photographs on Kodak Panatomic-X film with my "Texas Leica," the Fuji GW690II camera. It has a superb 5-element Fujinon 90mm ƒ/3.5 lens that equals the lenses on my Rolleiflex and Hasselblad. I used medium yellow, dark yellow, and yellow-green filters to darken the sky. Praus Productions in Rochester, New York, developed the film. 

Olympia Harbor Days 2024 (Oly 14)

Percival Landing, West Bay, Olympia

Olympians love their boats! and they seriously celebrate holidays, events, and themes. Olympia Harbor Days is a waterfront fête with vintage tugboats, foods, harbor tours, and children's booths. As the official web page states: 

"The Olympia Harbor Days Festival, a free event offered every Labor Day Weekend, is an award winning free and family friendly event that showcases many of the vintage tugboats of the Puget Sound with a walk aboard show at the docks and races in the bay.  Visitors to the event may also find tall ships, steamships, other historic vessels of twentieth century commerce, tribal canoes, and current recreational small watercraft.  Harbor crises and sailings on Budd Bay are also offered.

On land, festival attendees enjoy great food, great music, great artisans, plus nautical and marine themed attractions, and hands on activities, including Olympia’s tugboat heritage, tribal history and the working waterfront with Port of Olympia tours.  All in all, here are over 300 things to do and see." 

World War II era US Navy rescue tug, Comanche, later US Coast Guard 

The Comanche is a sturdy old navy tug, launched in 1943. I want onboard before the start of Harbor Days and spent an hour listening to two former crewmen relate stories. This old-timer needs a lot of maintenance and overhauling. It was powerful enough to tow aircraft carriers.

The big draw of Harbor Days is the famous tugboat race. This begins on Sunday with a processions of the tugs out of Percival Landing. The procession seemed a bit ad hoc, more like an occasional tug chugging north into West Bay. The actual race was too far north for us to see. 

Tug R. W. Confer

The R. W. Confer, built in 1930 in Portland, Oregon, towed logs on the Columbia River for 70 years.

  

Tug Chippewa 

This is a gorgeous restoration of a 1943 wooden tug. Tug Chippewa was built in Seattle and originally served as a Navy tug during WWII, patrolling Puget Sound. The Foss company later used it for service between Seattle and Alaska.

TugZilla, small but mighty

The tugs came from different original work environments, such as Puget Sound and the Colombia River. The Comanche, above, was ocean-going and operated on the Atlantic Coast as well as across the Pacific. Maintaining one of these old work boats is a serious financial commitment.

The Duplo marine engineer

Yacht skippers

Remote control sailing is a popular activity here. I see a group at Swantown Marine every Sunday. 

 

The Saga Beija Flor unloaded tons of Brazilian eucalyptus pulp paper for use by American paper companies to convert into toilet paper and paper towels. Your joy roll might have come from this vessel. The Port of Olympia offered walking tours of the secure area of the Port. This is a deep draft harbor, but the next dredging will be postponed until the City of Olympia addresses the contaminated sediment (much of it from creosote operations that extended over a hundred years). I took some Rolleiflex film pictures in the secure area, which you will see in the future.

These photographs are from my Fuji X-E1 digital camera with the 18-55mm Fuji lens. I use the Astia simulation. This is an "old" digital camera on current standards, but I seldom use it and have not seen a need to change it. 

On the Waterfront - the Thea Foss Waterway, Tacoma, Washington

Tacoma and the Foss Waterway (from the United States Environmental Protection Agency)

 Port of Tacoma from Standard and Chevron Roadmap, ca. 1947 (from History Link Essay 5150)

The Thea Foss Waterway, formerly the City Waterway, is an inlet that extends south from Commencement Bay. It separates downtown Tacoma (on the west) from the Port of Tacoma. The waterway is partly man-made.* In 1902, the US Army Corps of Engineers dredged an existing inlet to a width of 500 ft and extended it south, making it suitable for wheat freighters. The waterway is now named after Thea Foss, who founded the Foss Maritime Company on the inlet in 1889.

The Port of Tacoma had a long industrial and shipping history. As summarized by the Environmental Protection Agency:

Site History, Contamination and Remediation

The Thea Foss Waterway is the westernmost of five waterways that make up Commencement Bay’s industrial waterfront, and is located next to downtown Tacoma. Starting in the late 1800s, the area supported shipbuilding, oil refining, chemical manufacturing and other industries, as well as the western terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Northern Pacific owned much of Commencement Bay’s south shore, and created the Thea Foss Waterway by damming one arm of the Puyallup River.

Over time, industrial activities contributed to the contamination of soil, groundwater and bay sediment with heavy metals, phthalates, petroleum-based products, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and pesticides. Stormwater also contributed to sediment contamination; much of Tacoma’s urban drainage pours into the Thea Foss Waterway.

In the early 1980s, Ecology identified sediment contamination in Commencement Bay and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers studied the area. In 1983, EPA added the Commencement Bay Near Shore/Tide Flats site to the Superfund program’s National Priorities List (NPL); it was one of the program’s first sites. Encompassing 10 to 12 square miles of shallow water and land, and involving over a million cubic yards of contaminated sediments, it was also one of the program’s first mega-sites. The Thea Foss Waterway contains three of the enormous site’s eight contaminated sediment problem areas, which make up one of its four project areas.

During my previous life at the University of Washington, Tacoma was still a heavy industry city. When the wind blew from the south, "Aroma of Tacoma" reached all the way to the U District in Seattle. Yum.

The City of Tacoma coordinated with Tribes and bought abandoned properties along the shore, partly funded clean-up, and rebuilt shore protection. I never worked professionally on any marine sediments in Tacoma and know very little about this monumental clean-up effort. To a casual visitor today, the waterfront is quite inviting. But there is still industry and railroad infrastructure, so just my type of photographic subject matter. This time, we will look at the waterway and some of the adjacent area. (Click any picture to expand it and see details.)

Foss Waterway looking south towards the 11th Street bridge from the Foss Waterway Seaport (Tri-X film, Fuji GW690II camera with 90mm lens)

11th Street bridge view north from the Public Esplanade (T400CN film, Leica IIIC, 5cm ƒ/2 Summitar lens, yellow filter)

The 11th Street bridge, also known as the Murray Morgan Bridge, opened in 1913. In 2013, the City of Tacoma revitalized and restored this historic crossing of the Foss Waterway. 

Repair sheds, photograph looking east from 1199 Dock Street (T400CN film, Leica IIIC)

East 21st Street Bridge from Dock Street Extension (Panatomic-X film, Fuji GW690II camera)

The handsome cable-stayed bridge opened in January of 1997. It dominates the skyline over the Foss Waterway. 

Downtown Tacoma and the south end of the Foss Waterway

East D Street, view north from East 11th Street overpass (Tri-X 400 film)

East 11 Street overpass

Holding on for the ride, East D Street

I set up my tripod and a locomotive trundled along down the middle of the street. I like interesting  places like this. 

Steel warehouses, East F Street (Tri-X film Guji GW690II camera)

Dear Readers, you know where this is going. I often ask this question. What to do after a day of wandering around the harbor and taking photographs?

Salmon BLT sandwich at Fish Peddler

Why, it is obvious. Drop in at Fish Peddler right on the Foss Waterway for a salmon bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. Wash it down with a local IPA. I really like Tacoma...... 

The black and white photographs are from Kodak Panatomic-X or Tri-X film. I used my Texas Leica, the Fuji GW690II rangefinder camera. Its 90mm ƒ/3.5 5-element lens is superb, easily the equal of the Zeiss lenses for the Hasselblad camera. And this Fuji has a larger negative, resulting in an amazing amount of image data on each frame.  

Footnote

* This is another example of how many coastal features that we now see in the USA are partly man-made or were greatly modified by construction or alteration of the local and upland environment (such as dams on rivers). Many parts of our coasts are not "natural," especially near coastal inlets and urban areas. Even remote shores have changed because of dams on rivers trapping sediment.