Trailblazing Tacoma: Workin’ on the Railroad

A specter is haunting Tacoma: the ghost of the Prairie Line, the defunct railroad that ran through the heart of downtown. “It’s the original corridor around which Tacoma was founded,” says associate city planner Elliott Barnett, who is plotting the line’s reincarnation. “It’s going to be a premier bicycle and pedestrian path that reconnects downtown with its waterfront and some of our most important public spaces and institutions.” Soon, your Sunday stroll may take you from Foss Waterway through the University of Washington–Tacoma, and into a transformed Brewery District. 

The ghost railway today; courtesy of University of Washington Tacoma.

This fall, Barnett and his planner pals will find out whether they will get the $2.5 million grant that will start bringing the ghost back to life, “perhaps by early 2012,” Barnett says.

Seattle made such a path, the Burke-Gilman Trail, out of its old interurban railway, but that path is simply a recreational trail. Tacoma is likely to make the Prairie Line an art-immersive experience, by running it through historic areas that constitute an artwork in themselves. “We’re going to move the trail so it’s adjacent to Tacoma Art Museum,” says Diane Wiatr, who has arguably the coolest job title in town, mobility coordinator. “Public art will be a priority there.”

The Prairie Line plan for UW Tacoma (Pacific Ave. at bottom); courtesy of University of Washington Tacoma.

“The opportunity to connect Tacoma’s Museum District to the waterfront is both an exciting and a necessary project,” says TAM director Stephanie A. Stebich. “Completing the loop with the Bridge of Glass along Pacific to the Prairie Trail Line and waterfront would invite locals and visitors to experience the area in a new light.”

Wiatr compares the Prairie Line to Manhattan’s High Line. “It’s the most beautiful and successful landscape architecture project in the U.S. in decades. Twenty thousand people a day use it.” But the Prairie Line project is more central to civic identity, and potentially more transformative. “There’s not another space like this anyplace,” says Bennett. “It will activate downtown,” says Wiatr. “People in Seattle will say, ‘Hey, have you seen that cool trail in Tacoma?’” To become a city of destiny, sometimes an old railroad is what it takes.” •