TACOMA AND VICINITY.
Nuhn & Wheeler, Publishers,
TACOMA, WASH.
A copy of this book will be forwarded by mailon receipt of seventy-five cents.
COPYRIGHT 1888.
Tacoma and Vicinity.
Tacoma has well been called the “City ofDestiny,” for never in the history of ourgreat republic has the finger of destiny sounerringly pointed to the location of a large commercialand manufacturing metropolis as it did tothe shores of Commencement bay when the NorthernPacific located here the terminus of its mainline on Puget sound. In its history, years havewitnessed more life and growth, more progress inbusiness and wealth and the creation of more permanentvalues of property, than decades in thehistory of older and admittedly prosperous citiesof the eastern states. Eight years ago, at the beginningof the present decade, Tacoma had a populationof but seven hundred and twenty souls, itsstreets were ungraded and full of stumps, and itsbusiness blocks were few and of but the cheapestof frame structures. What mighty things havebeen wrought in the brief time which has sinceelapsed! Now it has many miles of graded streets,of water and gas mains, of telegraph, telephoneand electric light wires and street railways, solidblocks of brick and stone business structures, largeand commodious opera house, public schools, seminariesand academies, elegant hotels, large factories,great and expanding docks, warehouses andshipping facilities, a taxable property of $6,555,400and a population of twenty thousand souls. It isthis Tacoma of to-day, bustling, vigorous, full oflife and business, and advancing with prodigiousstrides, which is treated of in the following pagesof engravings and descriptive matter. These engravings,elegant and artistic as they are, fall farshort of doing justice to a city whose prosperity,vitality and progressiveness it is impossible to conveyto paper. They are the Tacoma of to-day, butwill be almost as unlike the great city ten yearsfrom now which will bear that name, as they areunlike that city of board shanties which occupiedthis site eight years ago.
PACIFIC AVE., SOUTH FROM NINTH ST.—TACOMA.
TACOMA’S NEW GRAND OPERA HOUSE.
Tacoma has hitherto lacked one most essentialfeature of a city—an opera house—andfor this reason has been often denied thepleasure of listening to some of the great dramaticstars who have visited the coast. It will not belong before this will be remedied, as the most elegantopera house north of San Francisco is now incourse of erection. Several of the public spiritedcitizens of this place recently