Tacoma’s Origin and Name.
Tacoma dates its birth from July 14, 1873. On that day the commissioners appointed to locate the Puget Sound terminal of the Northern Pacific railway decided to recommend as such a point on the south side of Commencement Bay, in township twenty-one, range three east of the Willamette meridian. Commencement Bay was the largest and best sheltered harbor to be found on Puget Sound and was accessible by easy grades for railways from the north, south and east, and by several easy passes over the great Cascade Mountain range. Into the bay flows the Puyallup River, fed by the eternal glaciers of Mount Tacoma, the giant dome of snow whose image Theodore Winthrop found “displaced in the blue depths of tranquil waters” in the bay. The shore line of the bay, stretching ten miles from Brown’s Point at the northeast to Point Defiance at the northwest was at the time referred to unbroken by human habitations, save a hamlet clustering about a saw mill on the west shore of the bay, a view of which, from a photograph taken in 1871, is presented on the opposite page. In 1870 the federal census enumerator had found seventy-three inhabitants at Tacoma.
Tacoma in 1904.
- 1—City and Mount Tacoma from Harbor.
- 2—Looking South from City Hall Tower.
- 3—Manufacturing District East of City Waterway.
- 4—Tacoma from McKinley Park.
In the Ferry Museum is the original plat or sub-division of some lands near the saw mill. It is entitled a map of lots at “Commencement City,” but a line is drawn through this name and the word “Tacoma” substituted. The owners of the land discussed the name “Commencement City” in the officers’ room of a Portland bank and rejected it as an awkward designation. They preferred instead the euphoneous Indian name of the mountain which rises majestically to a height of 14,526 feet southeast of the bay and commands the site of the city that was to be erected apparently at its very base. When President Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he selected Tacoma as the name of a new cruiser, remarking that in his judgment the name should have been adopted as the name of the State, instead of Washington.
The selection of Tacoma in 1873 as the terminus of the Northern Pacific railway sealed its destiny as a great city. During the same year a section of the road was completed and opened extending from the north bank of the Columbia River at Kalama to Tacoma. The largest towns at that time in the Pacific Northwest were Portland and Victoria. The route between the two was by river steamer from Portland to Kalama, thence by rail to Tacoma, and thence by sound steamer to Victoria and intermediate points, Seattle being the largest town on the route. Fourteen years, however, elapsed before the main transcontinental line of the Northern Pacific crossed the Cascades and entered Tacoma from the east.