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28-587: White Rock Pier is a 470-metre-long (1,540 ft) pier in White Rock, British Columbia . The pier has a sign identifying it as Canada's longest pier. However, the title is disputed with the Quai de Portneuf in Portneuf, Quebec , which is built in the same manner as the longer causeway at the nearby Tsawwassen ferry terminal . The original version of the pier was built in 1912 and resembled nothing more than

56-636: A 60-metre (200 ft) high bungee jump over the North Sea waves. The present pier is a successor of an earlier pier, which was completed in 1901 but in 1943 destroyed by the German occupation forces. The first recorded pier in England was Ryde Pier , opened in 1814 on the Isle of Wight , as a landing stage to allow ferries to and from the mainland to berth. It is still used for this purpose today. It also had

84-593: A floating dock about 300 feet in length. It was destroyed by winter storms in 1913. In 1914 the pier was rebuilt with an eye to making it a dock for steamships that arrived when the Great Northern Railway began operation. Although it was completed in August of that year, the onset of the First World War pushed the official opening back to November 14, 1914. The pier, now about 800 feet long,

112-642: A leisure function in the past, with the pier head once containing a pavilion, and there are still refreshment facilities today. The oldest cast iron pier in the world is Town Pier, Gravesend , in Kent , which opened in 1834. However, it is not recognised by the National Piers Society as being a seaside pier. Following the building of the world's first seaside pier at Ryde, the pier became fashionable at seaside resorts in England and Wales during

140-666: A linear littoral quayside, and such piers are usually much shorter. Typically each pier would carry a single transit shed the length of the pier, with ships berthing bow or stern in to the shore. Some major ports consisted of large numbers of such piers lining the foreshore, classic examples being the Hudson River frontage of New York , or the Embarcadero in San Francisco . The advent of container shipping , with its need for large container handling spaces adjacent to

168-477: A new pier was built in 1933. It remained till the present day, but was partially transformed and modernized in 1999–2004. In Nieuwpoort, Belgium there is a pleasure pier on both sides of the river IJzer . Scheveningen , the coastal resort town of The Hague , boasts the largest pier in the Netherlands , completed in 1961. A crane, built on top of the pier's panorama tower, provides the opportunity to make

196-566: A pier has two decks. Galveston Island Historic Pleasure Pier in Galveston , Texas has a roller coaster, 15 rides, carnival games and souvenir shops. Early pleasure piers were of complete timber construction, as was with Margate which opened in 1824. The first iron and timber built pleasure pier Margate Jetty , opened in 1855. Margate pier was wrecked by a storm in January 1978 and not repaired. The longest iron pleasure pier still remaining

224-456: A pier presents a set of different circumstances to fishing from the shore or beach, as you do not need to cast out into the deeper water. This being the case there are specific fishing rigs that have been created specifically for pier fishing which allow for the direct access to deeper water. In Blankenberge a first pleasure pier was built in 1894. After its destruction in the World War I ,

252-647: Is at Southend-on-Sea , Essex , and extends 1.3 miles (2.1 km) into the Thames Estuary . The longest pier on the West Coast of the US is the Santa Cruz Wharf , with a length of 2,745 feet (837 m). Providing a walkway out to sea, pleasure piers often include amusements and theatres as part of their attractions. Such a pier may be unroofed, closed, or partly open and partly closed. Sometimes

280-477: Is the one at Southend. First opened as a wooden pier in 1829, it was reconstructed in iron and completed in 1889. In a 2006 UK poll, the public voted the seaside pier onto the list of icons of England. Many piers are built for the purpose of providing boatless anglers access to fishing grounds that are otherwise inaccessible. Many "Free Piers" are available in larger harbors which differ from private piers. Free Piers are often primarily used for fishing. Fishing from

308-709: The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) on the Virginia Peninsula at Newport News and in South Hampton Roads by the Norfolk and Western (N&W) and Virginian Railway (VGN) at Norfolk , made the port of Hampton Roads the largest shipping point of coal in the world by 1930. The Curtis Bay coal terminal in Baltimore, Maryland , built by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) in

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336-751: The Powder River Basin to China . As of May 2013, three projects remained under consideration. Lighthouse Resources (formerly Ambre Energy) of Salt Lake City dropped their Morrow Pacific project proposed for Boardman, Oregon , in May, 2016. The US Army Corps of Engineers sided with the Lummi nation in denying a permit for the Gateway Pacific Terminal in May, 2016. The developers withdrew their application in 2017. Millennium Bulk Terminals proposed for Longview, Washington , lost

364-627: The Victorian era , peaking in the 1860s with 22 being built in that decade. A symbol of the typical British seaside holiday, by 1914, more than 100 pleasure piers were located around the UK coast. Regarded as being among the finest Victorian architecture, there are still a significant number of seaside piers of architectural merit still standing, although some have been lost, including Margate , two at Brighton in East Sussex , one at New Brighton in

392-591: The Wirral and three at Blackpool in Lancashire . Two piers, Brighton's now derelict West Pier and Clevedon Pier , were Grade 1 listed . The Birnbeck Pier in Weston-super-Mare is the only pier in the world linked to an island. The National Piers Society gives a figure of 55 surviving seaside piers in England and Wales. Coal pier A coal pier is a transloading facility designed for

420-507: The health of sandy beaches and navigation channels . Pleasure piers were first built in Britain during the early 19th century. The earliest structures were Ryde Pier , built in 1813/4, Trinity Chain Pier near Leith, built in 1821, Brighton Chain Pier , built in 1823. and Margate Jetty 1823/24 originally a timber built pier. Only the oldest of these piers still remains. At that time,

448-810: The 1880s, was for a time the largest such facility in the world. C&O and B&O also had facilities on Lake Erie . In modern times, CSX Transportation continues to serve coal piers at Newport News and Curtis Bay, and Norfolk Southern operates a large complex at Lambert's Point in Norfolk. In the Pacific Northwest of the United States, a number of coal terminals such as the Gateway Pacific Terminal in Bellingham, Washington , were proposed for export of coal from

476-581: The cars immediately (for example, with rotary car dumpers ) and store the coal in piles until the ship is loaded. This frees up the cars for immediate reuse and obviates rail yard maintenance. Dedicated coal piers began to be constructed in the 1880s at ports on the Atlantic Coast and Great Lakes in the United States , and many of these survive (though highly modified) to the present. In Virginia , beginning in 1881, coal piers, operated by

504-599: The fishing and cargo industries and serves as a port for large cruise ships in the area. Many other working piers have been demolished, or remain derelict, but some have been recycled as pleasure piers. The best known example of this is Pier 39 in San Francisco . At Southport and the Tweed River on the Gold Coast in Australia , there are piers that support equipment for a sand bypassing system that maintains

532-564: The image of a Victorian cast iron pleasure pier. However, the earliest piers pre-date the Victorian age . Piers can be categorized into different groupings according to the principal purpose. However, there is considerable overlap between these categories. For example, pleasure piers often also allow for the docking of pleasure steamers and other similar craft, while working piers have often been converted to leisure use after being rendered obsolete by advanced developments in cargo-handling technology. Many piers are floating piers, to ensure that

560-453: The introduction of steamships and railways for the first time permitted mass tourism to dedicated seaside resorts . The large tidal ranges at many such resorts meant that passengers arriving by pleasure steamer could use a pier to disembark safely. Also, for much of the day, the sea was not visible from the shore and the pleasure pier permitted holidaymakers to promenade over and alongside the sea at all times. The world's longest pleasure pier

588-461: The pier stretching far enough off shore to reach deep water at low tide. Such piers provided an economical alternative to impounded docks where cargo volumes were low, or where specialist bulk cargo was handled, such as at coal piers . The other form of working pier, often called the finger pier, was built at ports with smaller tidal ranges. Here the principal advantage was to give a greater available quay length for ships to berth against compared to

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616-459: The pier, destroying a large midsection of the pier. A stranded pedestrian also required a Coast Guard rescue. It was estimated that the cost to rebuild the pier would be $ 16.2 million. The pier was repaired and reopened in 2019. This British Columbia -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Pier Piers have been built for several purposes, and because these different purposes have distinct regional variances,

644-603: The piers raise and lower with the tide along with the boats tied to them. This prevents a situation where lines become overly taut or loose by rising or lowering tides. An overly taut or loose tie-line can damage boats by pulling them out of the water or allowing them so much leeway that they bang forcefully against the sides of the pier. Working piers were built for the handling of passengers and cargo onto and off ships or (as at Wigan Pier ) canal boats. Working piers themselves fall into two different groups. Longer individual piers are often found at ports with large tidal ranges , with

672-588: The proximity of nearby burning buildings and the fact that the pier was made of wood. In the 1940s & 1950s, the White Rock Pier was home to the Dolphin Restaurant. Around the same time, cars were allowed, leading to teenagers holding drag races on the pier, further damaging the structure. On December 20, 2018, the pier was damaged during a severe wind storm , causing sailboats to be released from their moorings and forced under and up through

700-504: The shipping berths, has made working piers obsolete for the handling of general cargo, although some still survive for the handling of passenger ships or bulk cargos. One example, is in use in Progreso, Yucatán , where a pier extends more than 4 miles into the Gulf of Mexico , making it the longest pier in the world. The Progreso Pier supplies much of the peninsula with transportation for

728-521: The term pier tends to have different nuances of meaning in different parts of the world. Thus in North America and Australia , where many ports were, until recently, built on the multiple pier model, the term tends to imply a current or former cargo-handling facility. In contrast, in Europe , where ports more often use basins and river-side quays than piers, the term is principally associated with

756-405: The transfer of coal between rail and ship. The typical facility for loading ships consists of a holding area and a system of conveyors for transferring the coal to dockside and loading it into the ship's cargo holds . Originally the holding area consisted of a rail yard in which the loaded cars were sorted by grade and held until needed for loading. Modern facilities are more likely to unload

784-405: Was granted a federal government approved extension in 1915 to 1542 ft. The pier fell into disrepair several times over the years, often requiring government funding and community fundraising to restore it. The constant battering by storms and subsequent damage finally led to the completion in 1953 of a permanent rock breakwater at the end of the pier. The pier almost caught fire a few times due to

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