Tacoma: Electric City of the Pacific Coast, 1904

1904
J. S. WHITEHOUSE, Secretary .
This pamphlet is issued by the Tacoma Chamber of Commerce and Board of Trade. Its object is to present reliable information concerning Tacoma and to interest in this city those who desire a location on the Pacific Slope in which to engage in business, manufacturing or shipping, or a desirable place in which to live.
The information herein contained is reliable and the statistics are official and up-to-date.
Further or special information of any character will be cheerfully furnished upon application to the
SECRETARY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE Tacoma, Wash.

By Louis W. Pratt.
Tacoma, the Electric City of the Pacific Coast, and the chief seaport of the North Pacific, is situated at the head of ocean navigation on Puget Sound in latitude 47° 15´ north and longitude 122° 25´ west from Greenwich. Being further north than Duluth or Quebec, Tacoma is supposed by many to be bleak and cold. A popular misapprehension among Eastern people seems to be that Puget Sound is somewhere near Alaska and that for half of the year the people contend with snow and ice.
The climate of the Pacific Slope west of the Cascade Mountains is tempered by the Pacific Ocean, the “Japan current” and the equable southwesterly winds. The climate resembles that of Western Europe rather than that of the American Continent east of the Rocky Mountains. Tacoma is four degrees further south than London, in about the same latitude as Nantes, the chief city of Brittany, near the mouth of the Loire. The climate of Puget Sound is warmer in winter and cooler in summer than that of Southern England, and is the most equable, salubrious and delightful to be found in the United States.
Eleventh Street at Pacific Avenue.
Tacoma’s winters are open, the grass is green and flowers bloom out of doors every month in the year. Last winter the temperature fell below the freezing point (32° above zero, Fahrenheit), on one day in November, six days in December, three days in January, five days in February and eight days in March. The minimum temperature on the coldest day in November was 28° above zero; in December, 29°; in January, 26°; in February, 23°; and in March, 29°. It would be more accurate to speak of the “winter” months as the “rainy season,” for one-half of the annual precipitation, which amounted to 45.11 inches in 1903, an amount slightly above the average rainfall, fell during the three months of January, November and December. Tacoma has little snow and no ice. Cyclones or furious winds, in this peculiarly sheltered region between the Olympics and the Cascades, are unknown.