Grand Trunk Pacific dock

Grand Trunk Pacific dock

Grand Trunk Pacific dock (tower on left), circa 1913.
Type	shipping pier and warehouse
Locale	Seattle, Washington
Owner	Grand Trunk Pacific Railway
Total length	605 ft (184.4 m)
Width	116 ft (35.4 m)
Opening date	1910
Destruction date	1964

The Grand Trunk Pacific dock was a shipping pier in Seattle, Washington. The original pier was built in 1910 and was destroyed in a fire in 1914. The pier was then rebuilt and continued in existence until 1964, when it was dismantled. The area where the pier stood is now part of the Seattle terminal of the Washington State Ferry system.

The Grand Trunk Pacific dock was located at the foot of Madison Street. The dock area had previously been used a wharf for the steamship Flyer. The Grand Trunk Pacific dock was located immediately to the north of Colman Dock, with the small U-shaped dock for the West Seattle ferry in between. Immediately to the north of the Grand Trunk dock was used by the Seattle fire department's fireboat Duwamish. The next pier north of the Seattle fire boat dock was the still existing Pier 54, previously known as Pier 3 or the Galbraith dock.

The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway dock stood just north of Colman Dock at the foot of Marion Street. The original dock was built in 1910 as the largest wooden pier on the West Coast. Construction of the dock required 5,000 timber pilings and 3,700,000 board feet of lumber. As built, the dock had a prominent tower on the water end that was 130 ft (39.6 m) high. The upper story of the dock was used for offices.

The dock was built by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, a Canadian company that built the second Canadian transcontinental railway and that also had interests in steamship lines. In 1910, the company had two new steamships built, the Prince Rupert and the Prince George, which used the Grand Trunk dock as their Seattle terminal. The Prince Rupert and the Prince George each could carry 1,500 day passengers, and also had 220 staterooms for longer runs. The Grand Trunk Railway employed them in competition with the steamships of the Canadian Pacific Railway on the “Triangle Route”, which ran between Seattle, Victoria, and Vancouver, British Columbia. The Grand Trunk liners also ran from the dock to the railway line's western terminus in Prince Rupert, British Columbia. The liners arrived in 1910, even though the first train did not reach Prince Rupert until 1914.