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 melting retreat of the Vashon Glaciation eroded the land, creating a drumlin field of hundreds of aligned drumlin hills. Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish (which are ribbon lakes), Hood Canal, and the main Puget Sound basin were altered by glacial forces. These glacial forces are not specifically "carving", as in cutting into the landscape via the mechanics of ice/glaciers, but rather eroding the landscape from melt water of the Vashon Glacier creating the drumlin field. As the ice retreated, vast amounts of glacial till were deposited throughout the Puget Sound region. The soils of the region, less than ten thousand