Commencement Bay is a bay of Puget Sound in the U.S. state of Washington. The city of Tacoma is located on the bay, with the Port of Tacoma occupying the southeastern end. A line drawn from Point Defiance in the southwest to Browns Point in the northeast serves to mark the generally accepted division between the bay and the open sound. Commencement Bay has become home to one of the most active commercial ports in the world. The Port of Tacoma is the main port facility.
The Puyallup River is the largest freshwater stream emptying into the bay. Others include Ruston Creek, Mason Creek, Asarco Creek, Puget Creek, Hylebos Creek, and Wapato Creek.
Read more about Commencement Bay: History, Environmental Issues
Famous quotes containing the words commencement and/or bay:
“After that came commencement day—that great day for which all other days were made. And it went. And that night I felt of myself all over, and to my astonishment, I found ‘twas the same old Rud. Not a single cubit added to my stature; not a hair’s breadth to my girth. If anything, on the contrary, I felt more lank and gaunt than common, much as if a load were off my stomach.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Three miles long and two streets wide, the town curls around the bay ... a gaudy run with Mediterranean splashes of color, crowded steep-pitched roofs, fishing piers and fishing boats whose stench of mackerel and gasoline is as aphrodisiac to the sensuous nose as the clean bar-whisky smell of a nightclub where call girls congregate.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)