Waited at the Dupont City Hall parking lot for the Seattle History Field Trip meetup, as instructed 10 minutes before the Fort Nisqually tour by Dupont Historical Society at 10am. Another Seattle couple arrived. We all waited until 10am, still no sign of the Seattle group.
Walked on Sequalitchew Creek Trail for a few minutes across Center Drive to the 1843 Fort Nisqually site. There, a table covered by white cloth, laid with archeology magazines, stickers, surrounded by a few people. Carol Estep from Dupont Historical Society is leading the tour. Once a year the Dupont Historical Society opens the original Ft. Nisqually site here for a free guided tour.
What's disappointing is that there's no structure left at all. Just the site.
It was moved here 10 years after Hudson's Bay Company builds Fort Nisqually in spring 1833, the first non-native settlement in Puget Sound area.
There's a replica of the site with a couple of original buildings in Point Defiance Park.
The photo to the right are the tombs found in the site and moved here.
It was Carol's historical photos and stories that made the place alive. She also told us something about the Dupond Company that owns all the surrounding land here. It started as a gun powder making enterprise, and any statics could be a disaster. So nothing metal was allowed, not even your belt.
Had to leave around 11:30 for the afternoon tour at Westpoint Waste Water Treatment Plant at Discovery Park.
The closing down of I-5 north in downtown was causing havoc.
By the time we arrived, it was almost 1:30! Thankfully the group was still in the classroom.
2 instructors and about 10 random people.
Everyone donned a hard hat, a reflective vest, and safty glasses, then we left the "education center".
After going through the "intake" building, which smells quite bad, we went to the control center with many monitoring screens, matricis with historical data. 1 employee on duty.
This guy in gray shirt is some kind of supervisor. He answered our questions.
Then we visited the pumps, the sediment tanks (half of those are being clean and reconstructed).
Aeration ponds (with ducks), the solid waste room (not inside, only looking through dirty windows).
Last, the new room with battery banks, for emergency.
Saw the 3 odor mitigation towers from the parking lot.
The solid waste is actually packaged up for fertilizer. They have partnered with some agency to distribute this human waster fertilizer, but not widely available (not for retail).
It is a good tour. It's offered quite a few times every year. Highly recommend it. The main take away is that we can only put 4P (pee, poop, pewk, toilet paper) down to the toilet, nothing else.
