| Prairie Line Trail | |
|---|---|
 Signage and art installations in the park in 2023 | |
| Location | Tacoma, Washington, U.S. |
Prairie Line Trail is a mile-long linear park in Tacoma, Washington. [1] [2] The park follows former railroad tracks and has multiple public art installations, [3] including Shipment to China .
In October 2019, a celebration was held for the opening of the downtown Tacoma segment of the trail, which stretches from the University of Washington Tacoma campus to the Foss Waterfront. [4]
Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific Coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels through the states of California, Oregon, and Washington, serving several large cities on the West Coast, including San Diego, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Portland, and Seattle. It is the only continuous Interstate highway to touch both the Mexican and Canadian borders. Upon crossing the Mexican border at its southern terminus, I-5 continues to Tijuana, Baja California, as Mexican Federal Highway 1 (Fed. 1). Upon crossing the Canadian border at its northern terminus, it continues to Vancouver as British Columbia Highway 99 (BC 99).
Pierce County is a county in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 921,130, up from 795,225 in 2010, making it the second-most populous county in Washington, behind King County, and the 60th-most populous in the United States. The county seat and largest city is Tacoma. Formed out of Thurston County on December 22, 1852, by the legislature of Oregon Territory, it was named for U.S. President Franklin Pierce. Pierce County is in the Seattle metropolitan area.
Tacoma is the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. A port city, it is situated along Washington's Puget Sound, 32 miles (51 km) southwest of Seattle, 31 miles (50 km) northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and 58 miles (93 km) northwest of Mount Rainier National Park. The city's population was 219,346 at the time of the 2020 census. Tacoma is the second-largest city in the Puget Sound area and the third-largest in the state. Tacoma also serves as the center of business activity for the South Sound region, which has a population of about 1 million.
The Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway (SLS&E) was a railroad founded in Seattle, Washington, on April 28, 1885, with three tiers of purposes: Build and run the initial line to the town of Ballard, bring immediate results and returns to investors; exploit resources east in the valleys, foothills, Cascade Range, and Eastern Washington in 19th-century style, attracting more venture capital; and boost a link to a transcontinental railroad for Seattle, the ultimate prize for incorporation. The historical accomplishment of the line was Seattle to Sumas at the border, with British Columbia, Canada, connecting with the Canadian Pacific transcontinental at the border at Huntingdon, British Columbia, now part of the City of Abbotsford.
The Burke–Gilman Trail is a rail trail in King County, Washington. The 27-mile (43 km) multi-use recreational trail is part of the King County Regional Trail System and occupies an abandoned Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway (SLS&E) corridor.
State Route 410 is a 107.44-mile (172.91 km) long state highway that traverses Pierce, King, and Yakima counties in the US state of Washington. It begins at an interchange with SR 167 in Sumner and travels southeast across the Cascade Range to a junction with U.S. Route 12 (US 12) in Naches. While the western part of SR 410 is a freeway that serves built-up, urban areas, the remainder of the route is a surface road that traverses mostly rural areas as it passes through the mountains.
The Mt. Rainier Scenic Railroad or MRSR,formerly The Mt Rainier Railroad and Logging museum (MRRR), is a steam-powered heritage railroad operating in the U.S. state of Washington between Elbe and Mineral. The railroad travels on trackage that passes through thick forest just south of Mount Rainier. The depot, gift shop and ticket office are located in Elbe. The train travels to the Logging Museum exhibits located in Mineral. The MRRR ran its collection of vintage rail equipment over seven miles of track, part of Tacoma Rail's Mountain Division.
The Baltimore & Annapolis Trail is a 13.3-mile (21.4 km) rail trail in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. The trail starts at Boulter's Way in Arnold and ends near Baltimore Light Rail's Cromwell Station in Glen Burnie. Starting near Annapolis at Jonas Green Park, the trail passes (northward) through Arnold, Severna Park, Millersville, Pasadena, and Glen Burnie. The Baltimore & Annapolis Trail follows the route of the Baltimore & Annapolis Railroad from which it derives its name. Proposed in 1972 by Jim Hague, it opened on Oct 7, 1990 as the second rail trail in Maryland.
The Lexington and West Cambridge Railroad was a railroad company chartered in 1845 and opened in 1846 that operated in eastern Massachusetts. It and its successors provided passenger service until 1977 and freight service until 1980 or early 1981.
The Interurban Trail are a pair of trails in Washington. The interurban Trail North is a bicycle route running from Downtown Seattle through Shoreline and to the Snohomish County, Washington line. The Interurban Trail South is a rail trail in King and Pierce counties.
State Route 510 (SR 510) is a state highway in Thurston County, Washington. The 13 miles (20.9 km) long highway extends southeast from an interchange with Interstate 5 (I-5) in Lacey to SR 507 in Yelm. SR 510 roughly parallels the Nisqually River, the border between Thurston and Pierce counties, between the Fort Lewis and Nisqually Indian Community area to Yelm.
A linear park is a type of park that is significantly longer than it is wide. These linear parks are strips of public land running along canals, rivers, streams, defensive walls, electrical lines, or highways and shorelines. Examples of linear parks include everything from wildlife corridors to riverways to trails, capturing the broadest sense of the word. Other examples include rail trails, which are disused railroad beds converted for recreational use by removing existing structures. Commonly, these linear parks result from the public and private sectors acting on the dense urban need for open green space. Linear parks stretch through urban areas, coming through as a solution for the lack of space and need for urban greenery. They also effectively connect different neighborhoods in dense urban areas as a result, and create places that are ideal for activities such as jogging or walking. Linear parks may also be categorized as greenways. In Australia, a linear park along the coast is known as a foreshoreway. When being designed, linear parks appear unique as they are planned around the public's opinion of how the space will affect them.
The Underline is a 10-mile linear park being developed in Miami-Dade County, Florida. When complete, it will run underneath the county's elevated Metrorail system from the Miami River near Brickell to the Metrorail's southern terminus at Dadeland South. The project is essentially upgrading a pre-existing bike path, known as the M-Path, into a full linear park. As of 2022, the first phase of the Underline is complete in the Brickell area. The second phase, which will run from Brickell to just south of Vizcaya station, is set to be complete in December 2023. The full park will be complete in fall of 2026.
The Point Defiance Bypass is a 14.5-mile-long (23.3 km) rail line between the cities of DuPont and Tacoma in Pierce County, Washington. It was originally built by the Northern Pacific Railway – the Tacoma–Lakewood segment in 1874 as part of the Prairie Line, and the Lakewood–DuPont section in 1891. Passenger service on the lines declined after the 1914 completion of a flatter route along Puget Sound, and ended entirely in 1956.
Rocky Prairie is a Puget prairie that is about 56 miles (90 km) southwest of Seattle, Washington, United States, and about 10 miles (16 km) south of Washington's capital city of Olympia. It sits very close to the Millersylvania State Park, the community of Maytown, and the city of Tenino.
The Expo Line Bikeway is a 12-mile (19 km) Los Angeles County, California rail with trail bicycle path and pedestrian route that travels roughly parallel to the Metro's E Line train tracks between the Exposition Park area near the USC campus and downtown Santa Monica near the Pacific Ocean. The Expo Line Bikeway is one of two major bicycle routes in Los Angeles that share dedicated rights-of-way with mass transit, the other being the Orange Line Bikeway in the San Fernando Valley.
Shipment to China is an abstract sculpture by Hai Ying Wu, installed in Tacoma, Washington's Prairie Line Trail, in the United States. It has 100 bronze boxes on a 1909 train car. According to Wu, the work "shows the bitterness of the Chinese experience in America during that time, for the railroad built by their efforts was the same transportation used to carry them out of Tacoma".
Media related to Prairie Line Trail at Wikimedia Commons