Tacoma

Tacoma, the second city of Washington state, stands on the east side of Puget Sound, by rail 145 miles N. of Portland, Oregon, and 18 S. by W. of Seattle. In 1880 Tacoma was a village with only 1098 inhabitants; in 1890 it was a flourishing city, with trams, cabs, water, gas, and the electric light, miles of wide streets, large wholesale stores, numerous mills and factories, and a busy port. In the district around are coal, iron, precious metals, lumber, farms of wheat, hops, fruit, and vegetables; it has extensive railroad connections, and a trade direct with Japan, forwarding tea to the eastern states by rail. Yet there are traces of the earlier condition of the locality, in the forest close at hand, and in the numbers of Indians seen in the streets from the reservation across the bay. Pop. (1890) 36,006. Behind the city an open valley runs towards where the beautiful volcano Tacoma (or Rainier) rises, from a ridge of snow-covered mountains, to a height of 14,444 feet.