Puget Sound Shore Railroad Puget Sound Shore Railroad The Puget Sound Shore Railroad and successor Northern Pacific and Puget Sound Shore Railroad built a branch line of the Northern Pacific Railroad between Puyallup and Seattle, Washington, U.S., and partially constructed a line around the east side of Lake Washington to Woodinville. After Congress chartered the Northern Pacific Railroad (NP) in 1864, the communities along Puget Sound competed to be its Pacific terminus. Tacoma, about south of Seattle, became the winner in July 1873, when the NP, then building north from Portland, selected it. Seattle businessmen immediately incorporated the Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad and
Puget Sound Central Basin. Puget Sound's sills, a kind of submarine terminal moraine, separate the basins from one another, and Puget Sound from the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Three sills are particularly significant—the one at Admiralty Inlet which checks the flow of water between the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound, the one at the entrance to Hood Canal (about below the surface), and the one at the Tacoma Narrows (about ). Other sills that present less of a barrier include the ones at Blake Island, Agate Pass, Rich Passage, and Hammersley Inlet. The depth of the basins is