Caroline Gallacci: 4 books

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 industrial growth and development. Wilkes's early exploration assured the inclusion of Puget Sound within...

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 region populated only by those visiting the city�s horseracing track. After Mason established a...

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��haunted it for decades after the tall-masted schooners, sailors, brothels, and saloons were gone....

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 created a city adjacent to the terminus. By the early years of the 20th century, downtown Tacoma was...