PORT ANGELES — A team of federal highway officials who visited Port Angeles on Wednesday to assess the cultural importance of Tse-whit-zen left without commenting on the future of the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard or where it might be relocated.
The group included the director of the Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation, part of the Federal Highway Administration, or FHWA.
They requested the meeting with Clallam County Commissioner Mike Doherty and representatives of the city of Port Angeles.
The group also met with Lower Elwha Klallam tribal officials at their reservation west of Port Angeles, and toured the 22.5-acre graving yard site on Marine Drive just east of the Nippon Paper Industries USA mill.
“They asked to come up here, get a few opinions, go back and tell the federal highway people if they were doing the right thing,” Doherty, D-Port Angeles, said Thursday.
“They were here on a fact-finding mission to review the graving dock site in terms of assessing its potential for being historically significant,” said City Manager Mike Quinn.