Where the Heck is Tacoma and Why Am I Here?

I woke up this morning to gloomy sky's and a temperature in the 50's. It is almost Summer. What else should I expect in Tacoma Washington?

Being raised in Southern California, All this dampness and gloom is trying on the soul. Will there be a real summer this year? Last year we only had about 3 weeks of summer weather. During that time we had a fantastic glimpse of Mt. Rainer. I have a lovely home with a spacious yard but it is generally to cold or wet to really get much enjoyment from the yard. How ever I do enjoy my house. I do a lot of home entertaining and the fireplace is almost always glowing. The high ceilings and spacious rooms are inviting. I have met and come to love some wonderful people here and have built a life all be it quite different from what I've always Known. I now must live most of my day's indoors where in the past I loved the care free outdoor life of sunny California.

Tacoma has an interesting history, The Tacoma area's original inhabitants, the Puyallup and Nisqually tribes lived here for centuries before European explorers arrived. The first European to reach Puget Sound was Captain George Vacouver arriving in 1792 and naming the body of water now known as the Puget Sound, after Peter Puget, one of his officers. Hudson's Bay Company built Fort Nisqually in 1833 in an area now called Point Defiance Park just a few miles south of where today's city of Tacoma is located . Settlers began to arrive in the 1850s, and Nicholas Delin built a cabin and sawmill along the waterfront in 1852, on the site of modern Tacoma. In 1868, the Northern Pacific Railroad chose Tacoma as it's Pacific Northwest terminal stop. Tacoma grew rapidly and was Incorporated in 1875.

1918, Tacoma became an official U. S. Port of Entry largely due to the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company. The Port of Tacoma is now a leading North American seaport. The Port is the seventh largest container port in North America and is a major gateway to Asia and Alaska

In 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge stretched like a steel ribbon across Puget Sound. The third longest suspension span in the world opened on July 1st. Only to collapse in a windstorm four months later on November 7,1940. "Galloping Gertie"s," short life ended in disaster. The bridge has been rebuilt and is known as the Tacoma Narrows bridge.

1890s Tacoma - a blockwide Turkish bath with terrazzo tiled floors in green, red, purple, white and ochre and white subway-style tiled walls. More than 110 years ago, a man named Peter Sandberg owned The Tacoma Baths that operated below a Pacific Avenue barbershop and catered to the loggers. Peter Sandberg ran Tacoma's prostitution business around the turn of the century. His payoffs of police and elected leaders eventually won passage of a City Council ordinance requiring the cops to round up prostitutes from the nice areas of downtown and segregate them in Sandberg's properties between Pacific Avenue and A Street at South 14th Street. This gave him complete control of the prostitution business in Tacoma.

With such a colorful history, Tacoma is now a lovely city that still has it's problems just like every other city. But I guess it isn't so bad to be lost in Tacoma . Oh Oh, I think the sun is trying to peek through the clouds. I'd better hurry to get outside before it's gone.

Today, Tacoma is Washington state's third-largest city, with approximately 315,000 residents.

Resources;

A History of Pierce County Washington
[Tacoma, WA]: Heritage League of Pierce County,
F 897. P6 H572, vol. 1, Tacoma Reference

Tacoma, It's History and It's Builders ( By Herbert Hunt)
Chicago, IL: The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1916
F899. T2 H9 1916, 3 vols. Tacoma Reference