Foundation of wood burning wigwam at Dickman Mill Park, Tacoma, WA
The Dickman Mill Park (Tacoma, WA) site has been shaped and changed over time by both natural processes and human interventions. These changes are described on the fence around the wetland at Dickman Mill Park–the following narrative is etched on metal fence post bands:
| This place changes, over time, by fire, flood and tides, erosion, and human activity. Once there was only beach. Then a mill was built over the water. Men worked hard, in noise and dust and danger. The mill burned. A wetland evolved, in place of fire. A park was created with wetland plants: hair- and salt-grass, silver- and gumweed, bulrush and mud rush, sea plantain, and artemisia. Juvenile salmon migrate along the shore, swim through the estuary and find food in the intertidal salt marsh and in the wetland. |
 Metal band on top of the fencing at Dickman Mill Park, Tacoma, WA |
Echoing this narrative of how spaces change over time, Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Dr. Caroline A. Bruzelius, of Duke University, noted in her March 9 University of Puget Sound public lecture that “man made space is constantly in flux and is always in a state of becoming.” Dr. Bruzelius and her students use digital tools to model architectural processes and changes that have occurred in Venice’s lagoon and Athen’s architecture. Her message that, “We change spaces to fit our needs for now” and her investigation into the question, “How does man made space reflect the past?” is an apt description of what is visible and invisible at Dickman Mill Park. As I listened to her lecture, and saw images of land and architecture in Italy and Greece, I thought of the layered history of Dickman Mill Park—from wetland, to mill, to park.
Wood Industry Legacy
“Few cities blend beautiful natural setting and strong industrial economy more admirably than does Tacoma, Washington” wrote Gertrude McKean in Tacoma, Lumber Metropolis (p. 311). In reviewing Tacoma’s economic position and outlook in 1941, McKean noted that Tacoma was “an industrial city dominated by wood processing” (p. 320) that had natural advantages such as deep water and wooded hills, as well as human made features like rail transportation, cheap electric power, and storage facilities. She highlighted the steady decline of the lumber industry due to competition with other building materials and dwindling availability of large trees. She wrote, “Although reforestation and sustained yield practices have been adopted to some extent, they are still insufficient to balance the amount of cutting, and gradual depletion is taking place” (p. 319).
The legacy of Tacoma as a wood processing capital is made visible in the design and interpretative panels at Dickman Mill Park and in brass sidewalk plaques that mark the sites of former lumber mills along Ruston Way. At the park visitors can observe portions of the concrete foundation of the Dickman Mill wigwam and boiler room, lumber and logs on the beach, and an intertidal channel that brings changing tides into a wetland created as a resting spot for birds. Pilings serve as a visual reminder of our dependence on wood for construction. While the pilings also serve as bird habitat, they contribute to the ongoing pollution in Commencement Bay waters by leaching chemicals from the wood preserver creosote.
Gulls and cormorants on pilings, Dickman Mill Park, Tacoma, WA
The legacy of saw mills, shingle mills, and woodworking plants dramatically impacts the Ruston Way waterfront today. Joel Elliott, University of Puget Sound Professor of Biology, and his colleagues, have identified an important relationship between human-generated lumber wood waste and the growth of bacterial mats and eelgrass. Eelgrass is a marine grass that provides habitats for young fish and shellfish.
Soils at former lumber mill sites along Ruston Way, including the Dickman Mill Park site, contain substantial amounts of sawdust and wood chips. Decomposition of wood waste by bacteria creates very high concentrations of sulfide that inhibit eelgrass growth. However, Beggiatoa bacteria remove toxic sulfide, thus, over time, have the potential to facilitate the growth of eelgrass. These relationships between human wood waste, wood decomposition, removal of sulfide by bacteria, and growth of eelgrass, demonstrate how human activity and natural processes shape the landscape as it changes over time.
Visitor Perspectives
This week on my walk with a Western and environmental historian, my walking partner shared this reflection when we reached Dickman Mill Park,
“Are there enough legible signs in the park environment to make visible the profound shift that has taken place on Ruston Way from a working waterfront to a site for recreation? The pilings are a sign of the working waterfront past, but the waterfront of the past was very, very different with saw mills and steam ships and sailing ships coming from across the globe. The Puyallup tribe used all of this area to gather food and live. The current waterfront is not connected to labor in the same way.”
Visitors appreciate the logs and pilings, how the designed intertidal channel and wetland buffers the beach space from the traffic on Ruston Way, and how the wetland and pilings provide a bird habitat. In response to the question, “Do you have a favorite spot along the Ruston Way waterfront? Where? What makes it a favorite for you?” a number of community members identified Dickman Mill Park as a favorite place. Three community members shared the reflections below:
Overview of Dickman Mill Park, Tacoma, WA
“My favorite spot along Ruston Way is the walkway that goes out to the beach by Dickman Mill. The Dickman Mill beach area has been a favorite because, despite it being laid out as easy access to the beach, it actually feels very secluded from the bustling traffic, due to the habitat area buffering Ruston Way and the beach, and, even on sunny summer days, the area seldom has many people. I prefer quiet, contemplative spaces when I go to the beach and this spot fulfills that for me.”
“I love the semi-beach area in between the restaurants in front of decrepit pilings that must have supported a dock or structure at one point. There are many birds to watch there and the logs are nice to sit on.”
“A second favorite spot for purely practical reasons is the area with the bathrooms between the Silver Cloud and Harbor Lights. That whole area is critical to my experience, because I need a bathroom if I’m going to do a big loop. And, the beach and dock there are fun to walk around too, just to break off of the sidewalk for a while and look at logs. And, when my kids were younger, they liked skipping stones there.”
Visitors highlight that the park site has a past; some name it “Dickman Mill” and others identify the “decrepit pilings that must have supported a dock or structure at one point.” I note that visitors especially appreciate the wetland and beach habitat and the large driftwood logs at the park. The logs, some full tree trunks, make visible the timber once milled at Dickman Mill.
Restoration: Creating Habitat
Dickman Mill Park is an example of a restoration project that seeks to both make the past use of the site visible and to restore land so that plants and other species have more habitat space. In Plants as Persons Matthew Hall writes, “Restoration of habitats is a way of giving something back to the natural world. It is primarily an active, performed apology for centuries of domination . . . restoration actively gives space for the lives of plant species” (p. 167). Hall emphasizes that plants (e.g., eelgrass and Douglas fir trees) should be included in our considerations of care. He notes, “we have a choice between “treating trees as raw materials or treating them with respect” (p. 158). My walking and reading this week have supported me to consider how humans background plants by considering them inanimate and un-minded in order to justify using them as resources. Dickman Mill Park can remind us of how human actions in the landscape impact plant populations like eelgrass and fir trees.
Designed intertidal channel, Dickman Mill Park, Tacoma, WA
As I consider Dickman Mill Park I think about the layers of history at the site, some immediately visible, like the pilings and wigwam foundation, others less visible, like sulfide concentrations in soil and diminished eelgrass populations underwater in Commencement Bay. As I reflect on the narrative etched on fence posts, I note the lack of acknowledgement of the Puyallup tribe’s connection to, and use of, the bay named Shubahlup (sheltered place). The lumber mill legacy is a part of Tacoma’s long history as an industrial center that utilizes both human and non-human labor. I’m thinking about the terms “labor” and “working waterfront” in relation to the passing cargo ships, the MetroParks staff who maintain park spaces, the bacteria that remove sulfide from Commencement Bay sediment, the eelgrass and Douglas fir trees that produce oxygen through photosynthesis and also create habitats and stabilize soil, and the visitors who come to Ruston Way before or after work for restoration and recreation in nearby nature.
For more information about this research project read the Project Overview.
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Resources
Elliott, J. K., Spear, E., Wyllie-Echeverria, S. (2006). Mats of Beggiatoa bacteria reveal that organic pollution from lumber mills inhibits growth of Zostera marina. Marine Ecology, 27, 372-380.
Hall, M. (2011). Plants as persons. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
McKean, G. L. (1941). Tacoma, lumber metropolis. Economic Geography, 17 (3), 311-320.
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