The Kalakala, Puget Sound’s most famous ferry, was scheduled to be towed from its moorage in Tacoma, Wash., to a nearby graving dock and cut into scrap by the end of January. The current owner, Karl Anderson, said he’s spent $500,000 keeping the old boat afloat and that the time had come to put her out of her misery, which will take another $500,000. The 276' art deco ferry shuttled vehicles and people between Seattle and Bremerton from 1935 to 1967. Numerous attempts to preserve the iconic vessel, which was towed back to Seattle from Kodiak, Alaska, where she housed a fish processing operation in the 1970s, have come up short. Anderson told the Tacoma News Tribune that he has contacted Kia Motors Corp. with an offer to use the scrap metal for a special model of car, including the name Kalakala (ka-LOCK-a-la).
