TACOMA, Wash. — One of the former icons of the Northwest has made its final journey. The famous Art Deco ferry , the Kalakala, has been towed to the scrap heap.
The ferry has been moored in the Hylebos Waterway, where it’s been decaying for a decade.
It’s headed to a dry dock on the Blair Waterway in the Port of Tacoma to be scrapped.
The Kalakala carried millions of cars between Seattle and Bremerton between 1935 and 1967. The 276-foot Art Deco-style vessel was a postcard symbol of Seattle pre-Space Needle.
Then it was decommissioned and towed to Alaska and used as a crab and fish processor at Dutch Harbor and Kodiak.
It was later discovered and towed back to Seattle in 1998 with high hopes for a restoration to turn it into a museum, restaurant or tourist attraction. But the owners never came up with enough money. It was towed to several locations, arriving in 2004 on the Hylebos Waterway.
In 2011, the Coast Guard said it was so corroded it was in danger of imminent sinking and declared the Kalakala a hazard to navigation.
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