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The rotten-egg stench that drove Bruce Springsteen out of Tacoma

Ellsworth Toohey
Jul 12, 2026
∙ Paid
Lyn Topinka (USGS) / Public domain (via Wikipedia)

Tacoma, Washington is infamously odoriferous. The Aroma of Tacoma — a rotten-egg odor concentrated in the tideflats and familiar to anyone driving that stretch of Interstate 5 — got its name by the early 1940s, though resident George Francis Train was already rhyming on it in a 1901 civic cheer: “Seattl…

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