For more than 150 years, the activity on and around Commencement Bay-since the 1840s, when Charles Wilkes first named it, to the present day-has been a barometer for measuring Tacoma's maritime and in
When Allen C. Mason launched his Point Defiance line in the early 1890s, the Proctor area became one of Tacoma's first streetcar suburbs. Before this time, Tacoma's North End was a remote, unsettled r
Tacoma, like most cities across the nation, has changed its appearance over time, creating many different urban landscapes. This phenomenon was apparent throughout the area as landowners, developers,
In 1873, the Northern Pacific Railroad selected the south shore of Commencement Bay as the terminus of its transcontinental line. Connected to, but independent of the railroad, the Tacoma Land Company
In 1865, Job Carr paddled a canoe to his new homestead on a small harbor that would become Old Tacoma. The area's notorious reputation--as "The Wildest Port North of San Francisco's Barbary Coast"--ha
