Puget's Sound ― A Narrative of Early Tacoma and the Southern Sound

With the same ability to make personalities and events come alive that characterizes his classic Skid Road, Murray Morgan here tells the colorful story of Tacoma, “the City of Destiny,” and southern Puget Sound, where many major events of Washington’s history took place. Drawing upon original journals and reports, Morgan builds Puget’s Sound around individuals, interweaving portraits of well-known historical figures with those who are more obscure but have a special significance: a colorful parade of saloonkeepers, politicians, union organizers, schemers, and swindlers. Morgan begins his account with the landing of Captain Vancouver in Puget Sound in 1792 and ends with the founding of Fort Lewis in 1916, the year the author was born. Between are the arrival of the transcontinental railroad, the boom-and-bust of lumber mills, the anti-Chinese riots of 1885, and more unique Northwest history that will intrigue both new arrivals and longtime residents.

With a new introduction by historian and historic preservationist Michael Sean Sullivan, this redesigned edition of Puget’s Sound brings new life to Morgan’s landmark history of the South Sound and the early days of Tacoma.

Murray Morgan (1916–2000), a journalist and historian, was the author of more than twenty books, including Skid Road: An Informal Portrait of Seattle and The Last Wilderness, a history of the Olympic Peninsula. He worked for Time magazine, the New York Herald Tribune, and CBS News and hosted the early morning radio show “Our Town, Our World.” Michael Sean Sullivan is a public historian, writer, and historic preservationist. He has taught Pacific Northwest history at the University of Washington Tacoma for more than twenty years and, as a graduate student, studied with Murray Morgan.