Does Tacoma still smell like the Aroma of Tacoma?

Where the Aroma of Tacoma came from

For most of the last century, the tideflats at the head of Commencement Bay were Tacoma’s industrial yard. The Puyallup River built them as a delta. The city dredged waterways through them, and mills, plants and shipping terminals filled in the rest.

Over the years the smell has been blamed on the bay’s sediment, a rendering plant, an oil refinery and more, but the source named most often was the kraft pulp mill on the tideflats, which ran under a series of owners for decades, most recently WestRock. Kraft pulping cooks wood chips in a chemical solution that includes sulfur compounds, and mills that use it are known for a sulfurous odor people compare to rotten eggs or boiled cabbage. The tideflats sit right beside I-5, so anyone driving between Seattle and Olympia on the wrong morning got a dose of it. That is how a city known for its parks and its old neighborhoods ended up with a nickname about its smell.

The Asarco copper smelter in Ruston, out past the North End near Point Defiance, shares the blame in a lot of people’s memories. Its tall stack was a landmark until the smelter closed in 1985, and the stack came down in 1993. The site is now Point Ruston, with apartments and shops along the waterfront path. The smelter’s longer legacy is in the soil across the region, which the Washington State Department of Ecology addresses through its Tacoma Smelter Plume project. That is a question for Ecology’s maps more than your nose.

What changed when the tideflats mill closed in 2023

WestRock closed the Tacoma mill in 2023. With it went the source people named most often when they said the Aroma of Tacoma.

The reputation has outlasted the mill. People who drove through years ago still bring it up, and relocation lists keep repeating the old line. If you are moving from Seattle or from out of state and a friend warned you about the smell, that warning is mostly out of date.

What the tideflats are today is still a working port. There are container terminals and rail yards, fuel storage and industrial plants, and a steady stream of trucks. Those have smells of their own, and that is the part of the answer worth taking seriously.

Where you might still catch a whiff

Nothing here is constant. On plenty of days you will notice nothing at all.

The places where an odor is likeliest are the ones closest to the tideflats and the water: Fife and the streets off Port of Tacoma Road, the Dometop and the edges of the Eastside, the Thea Foss Waterway downtown, and Northeast Tacoma on the bluff above the Hylebos Waterway. The possible sources are ordinary for a port city. Diesel from trucks and ships. Low tide on the mudflats and at the river mouth. The city’s wastewater treatment plant on the tideflats. Whatever an industrial neighbor happens to be running that day.

Weather decides a lot of it. Puget Sound winds tend to shift with the seasons, often blowing from the south in the wet months and from the north in summer, which changes which neighborhoods sit downwind. Calm, damp mornings, especially in fall and winter, let smells hang near the ground far longer than a breezy afternoon does. A street that seems fine on a sunny July afternoon can feel different at seven on a foggy November morning.

Some smells get pinned on the port when the cause is closer to home. Wood smoke settles into low spots on cold, still winter nights, which are also the nights the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency is most likely to call a burn ban. A sewer smell on a single block usually traces to a dry drain, a vent or a problem in a line, and the city’s wastewater crews are the people to ask about it. Along the lower Puyallup River, low water smells like any estuary. None of these is the Aroma of Tacoma, and none of them is unique to Tacoma either.

Farther from the water, the tideflats matter less. The West End and University Place are a long way from the port, and Puyallup, Sumner and the other valley towns on the cities page sit well inland from it.

How to check a neighborhood with your own nose

This takes a few visits at inconvenient hours.

• Go early on a still, gray morning, when the air moves least.
• Come back in the evening, and once more on a weekday when the port is busy.
• If the house is close to the water, check a tide table and visit once near low tide.
• Drive your real commute with the windows cracked. A quiet house on the bluff can still put you on SR 509 or I-5 past the tideflats twice a day.
• Stand in the backyard for ten minutes and listen as well as sniff.
• Talk to a neighbor who is out gardening or walking a dog. People tend to be candid about their own street.

If something bothers you after you move in, the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency takes odor complaints from the public in Pierce County. It is worth knowing the agency exists before you ever need it.

Living near the tideflats today: port, rail and industry

For most people near the tideflats, smell turns out to be the smaller adjustment. Activity is the bigger one. Container terminals can work well into the night. Freight trains move through Fife and along the waterways, and trucks use Port of Tacoma Road and SR 509 at all hours. From the Northeast Tacoma bluff and the hills of the Eastside, the terminal lights stay on after dark.

Some buyers want exactly that. Cranes and ships working below, with the mountain behind them on a clear morning, are the reason they shop on that side of town. Others would lie awake listening to a locomotive idle at two in the morning. Neither reaction is wrong, and a daytime showing will not tell you which one you have. That is why I suggest going back once after dark before you commit to a house near the port.

It also helps to know what is planned nearby. The Port of Tacoma and the City of Tacoma both publish information about tideflats land use and projects, and a quick look can tell you whether the empty lot below a view house is likely to stay that way. Ask the listing broker what they know, and read the seller’s disclosure closely.

If the older houses on the hill above downtown appeal to you more than a port view, I wrote about what owning one involves in buying a house in a Tacoma historic district. And if you are weighing the far side of the Narrows instead, Gig Harbor or University Place compares the two towns on either side of the bridges.