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.
[Illustration: 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.