Tacoma waterfront / Old Town — Industrial Waterfront, Genuinely Rebuilt, Not a Resort Town

What Actually Makes Tacoma's Waterfront and Old Town Different

Start with the fact that separates this page from every ocean-beach market on this site: Tacoma's waterfront is not, and has never tried to be, a resort destination. It is a working industrial harbor that has been substantially rebuilt into residential and public space over roughly three decades, and understanding that history -- not just the current amenities -- is essential to understanding what a buyer is actually purchasing here. Old Town itself is the literal origin point: Job Carr built a cabin near this shore in 1865, ahead of the Northern Pacific Railroad's decision to make Commencement Bay its western terminus, and developer Morton McCarver bought most of Carr's claim in 1868 to plat "Tacoma City." A separate townsite, "New Tacoma," grew up around the railroad's actual terminus and eventually merged with Old Town into the single city known today -- meaning Old Town's identity as the original settlement, distinct from downtown, is a real, documented historical fact, not marketing language. Two of Old Town's buildings carry that history forward physically: St. Peter's Church, Tacoma's oldest existing building, and Slavonian Hall, built by Croatian immigrants who settled here starting in the 1880s -- both on the National Register of Historic Places.

Commencement Bay was chosen as the Northern Pacific Railroad's western terminus in 1873 specifically because it could dock more than 50 ships at once and was deep enough for vessels of any draft -- a real geographic advantage that turned this shoreline into a major industrial harbor rather than a beach town. That legacy is still visible and economically active today: the Port of Tacoma now controls more than 2,400 acres along Commencement Bay's waterfront and, operating jointly with the Port of Seattle as the Northwest Seaport Alliance, ranks among North America's busier container ports. This isn't background trivia -- it directly shapes what it means to live on this waterfront. A buyer here is choosing genuine proximity to an active working port and its associated freight, rail, and industrial activity, a fundamentally different daily reality than a market built purely around tourism and recreation.

The most consequential single redevelopment story on this waterfront is the Thea Foss Waterway. Named for Thea Foss, who founded the Foss Maritime Company on this inlet in 1889, the waterway grew into a dense industrial hub of shipyards and manufacturers -- and by the 1980s had been largely abandoned, with decades of industrial activity leaving the soil, groundwater, and sediment contaminated enough that the EPA listed the Thea Foss and adjacent Wheeler-Osgood waterways as part of the broader Commencement Bay Nearshore/Tideflats Superfund site. The City of Tacoma commissioned the Foss Waterway Development Authority in 1996 to implement a redevelopment plan finalized in 1998; dredging and sediment capping wrapped up in 2006. What exists today is a genuine, verifiable transformation: a public esplanade running the length of the waterway, Thea's Landing as the first residential development in the formerly derelict industrial shoreline, the Museum of Glass with its free, 24/7, 500-foot Chihuly Bridge of Glass connecting the waterfront to downtown, and Dock Street Marina hosting yachts up to 120 feet. This is a Superfund-to-residential-neighborhood story with real dates and real regulatory documentation behind it, not a developer's talking point.

A second, parallel redevelopment sits at the north end of this same waterfront, adjacent to Old Town and Point Defiance Park: Point Ruston, built on the former ASARCO copper smelter site. That smelter began as the Ryan Smelter in 1888, became the Tacoma Smelting and Refining Company in 1890, and was sold in 1905 to the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO), which converted it to copper smelting in 1912 and operated it until closing in 1985. The site was designated a Superfund cleanup location in 1983, and the plant's smokestack -- once the world's largest -- was demolished on January 17, 1993. EPA-overseen soil sampling covered 3,570 properties across Ruston and North Tacoma, with soil replaced at 2,436 of them, reflecting how far the smelter's contamination -- the "Tacoma Smelter Plume" -- actually spread beyond the plant footprint itself. Point Ruston, LLC purchased the site in 2006 and took over cleanup and redevelopment; what exists today is a mixed-use waterfront district of condos, restaurants, and shops at the north end of Ruston Way. A buyer evaluating property anywhere near this footprint should understand that legacy directly rather than assume it away -- ask specifically about soil testing and remediation status for any parcel near the former smelter site.

Between those two redevelopment zones runs Ruston Way, a roughly 3.2-mile paved waterfront path along Commencement Bay connecting a real string of public parks: Chinese Reconciliation Park, Jack Hyde Park, Old Town Dock, Dickman Mill Park, Les Davis Pier, Judge Jack Tanner Park, and Cummings Park, ending at Dune Peninsula inside Point Defiance Park. Chinese Reconciliation Park deserves to be named plainly and taken seriously, not glossed over: it commemorates the November 3, 1885 forced expulsion of Tacoma's roughly 200 Chinese residents -- men, women, and whole families rounded up and marched out of the city in an event that became known nationally as "the Tacoma Method" for its organized, non-violent-on-the-surface execution, and their homes were burned to the ground the following day. No Chinese residents returned to Tacoma until the 1920s. The City Council formally approved a Chinese Reconciliation Resolution on November 30, 1993, and the park itself -- sited near the location of the original Chinese settlement, known as "Little Canton" -- opened its first two phases in late 2010. This is real, documented civic history that any honest account of this waterfront has to include.

At the north end of Ruston Way sits Point Defiance Park, a 760-acre urban park founded in 1888 -- nearly 400 acres of it old-growth forest -- drawing more than three million visitors a year. It holds the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium (the zoo dating to 1905, the aquarium to 1935, together spanning 29 acres with more than 9,000 specimens across 367 species) and, distinct from any Seattle-area ferry route, the Point Defiance-Tahlequah ferry, a genuine Washington State Ferries route connecting this exact shoreline directly to Vashon Island. For a waterfront buyer here, that ferry access is a real, practical amenity, not a scenic backdrop.

Getting into Tacoma from the Kitsap Peninsula side means crossing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge -- and this page is written specifically from the Tacoma side of that crossing, distinct from any coverage of the bridge's western landing near Gig Harbor. The original span, nicknamed "Galloping Gertie," opened July 1, 1940 and collapsed in a windstorm just over four months later, on November 7, 1940 -- no human lives were lost, though a dog named Tubby died in the collapse -- and the failure fundamentally reshaped structural and aerodynamic bridge engineering worldwide. A replacement span opened October 14, 1950, and a second, parallel span opened in 2007 to double capacity; that second span's construction cost is repaid through tolling, with 2026 passenger-car tolls running $4.50 with a Good To Go transponder, $5.50 by cash or credit, or $6.50 pay-by-mail, charged only on trips heading into Tacoma. For anyone weighing a Tacoma waterfront purchase against a Gig Harbor or Kitsap Peninsula property, that toll is a real, recurring cost of any regular westbound-to-eastbound commute pattern -- confirm current rates directly at wsdot.wa.gov before assuming a fixed number holds.

Finally, be honest about what this page could not pin down with full confidence. No Old-Town-specific population figure separate from Tacoma's citywide 220,182 (2020 Census) was found. Old Town waterfront home price figures in the $750,000 to $1.3 million range, with view/waterfront properties reportedly exceeding $2 million, come from a single 2025 brokerage source and were not independently cross-verified against a second source the way this page's citywide figures were. And no parcel-specific liquefaction displacement figure, insurance premium, or exact soil-remediation status for any specific address near the former ASARCO site is stated here. Confirm all of these directly with a Tacoma-focused buyer's agent, the Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer, a Washington-licensed insurance agent, and the City of Tacoma's Planning and Development Services Department before making a purchase decision.