Coal shipments from the port of Tacoma average twenty-seven thousand tons a month, being the product of mines situated in the region immediately tributary to the city and along the line of the Northern Pacific. These mines are owned and operated by the Carbon Hill Coal Co., the Wilkeson Coal and Coke Co., the Tacoma Coal Co., the South Prairie Coal Co., all in the Puyallup region, and the Bucoda Coal Co., south of the city. Nearly all these shipments go by sail and steamer to the San Francisco market. The Durham coal mines, sixty miles east of Tacoma, are just being opened, and provision is being made for a daily output of three hundred tons. This is fine coking coal, and will be used by the great iron smelters to be erected at Cle Elum. The mine is the property of the Pacific Investment Co. At Roslyn, on the east side of the mountains, are the mines of the Northern Pacific Coal Co., whose headquarters are in this city. Inexhaustible in quantity, and much of it making the finest quality of coke, the coal deposits about Tacoma must build up a very large city here. Iron ore of a superior quality lies in immense and easily accessible deposits almost at the city’s gate. Coal, coke and iron, with limestone in abundance, suggest the great manufacturing possibilities, to take advantage of which an immense enterprise is already on foot, in the form of a gigantic iron smelting plant, to be erected at Cle Elum, near the Roslyn mines, by the Moss Bay Iron Co., one of the largest institutions of its kind in England, and the huge reduction works soon to be erected at Tacoma by a company recently organized for that purpose.
HOTEL FIFE—TACOMA. FARRELL & DARMER, ARCHITECTS.
LUMBER INTERESTS OF TACOMA.
Lumber is one of the chief products of Puget sound, and in the lumbering industry Tacoma leads all other cities on the sound, or on the Pacific coast. Mill capacity has more than doubled the present season. In January four mills were cutting four hundred thousand feet per day; since then five new mills have been built and two of the old ones have increased their capacity, one of them, the Tacoma Mill Co., to five hundred thousand feet, making now a total output of eight hundred and thirty-five thousand feet. This will be greatly increased in a short time, as one of the mills, owned by the St. Paul & Tacoma Lumber Co., is credited with only fifteen thousand feet, and is but a temporary concern engaged in sawing timbers for an immense mill which will be turning out five hundred thousand feet per day in a few weeks. Another new mill will cut one hundred thousand feet, and still another thirty-five thousand, while the capacity of another will be increased. Thus, by the spring of 1889, Tacoma will have eleven mills cutting an aggregate of more than one and one-half million feet of lumber per day. On the opposite page is an engraving of the Pacific Mill, built this year, and one of the most complete establishments of its kind in the world, with a capacity of three hundred thousand feet a day. The larger mills are all supplied with shingle and lath machines, and millions of lath and cedar shingles are made daily. The output of shingles has quadrupled within the past year. Sash and door factories have increased in number and capacity, their product finding a market on the sound and along the line of the Northern Pacific. Lumber is shipped from the mills direct to California, Chili, Peru, Central America, Sandwich islands, Australia, Japan and China, and ship timbers, spars and masts are sent to Europe and the Atlantic coast of the United States. Often a dozen ships are in port at one time loading lumber, and the scene along the docks is a busy one. By rail, lumber is sent as far east as Denver and Omaha.
THE PACIFIC MILL, TACOMA.