USA > Washington > History of Washington the evergreen state : from early dawn to daylight with portraits and biographies Vol. II > Part 24
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" At this time the present site of Tacoma boasted but two set- tlers-a man by the name of Galliher, who was running an old saw-mill at the mouth of the creek of that name, and Mr. Job Carr, who some five years previous came from Iowa with the idea of settling (we find here rather a remarkable agreement of opinion) at the point which he believed would one day become the terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Carr's diagno- sis was a correct one, and he made a financial mistake when he sold five acres to McCarver of the claim he had taken as a squat- ter, the land being yet unsurveyed by the Government, and it was not until two years later, and even then only by paying two thirds of the expense, that he succeeded in having it done. After concluding his bargain with Carr the general located a claim in his own name, and shortly afterward left for Portland, having selected as a name for the proposed town Commence- ment City.
" Arriving in Portland, and passing the night at the residence of his son-in-law (C. P. Ferry), the name came up for discus- sion, and Mr. Ferry raised the very sensible objection that Commencement Bay was too long, and suggested, by a most happy inspiration, Tacoma. The discussion upon this point was
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again resumed on the following day at a meeting held at the First National Bank of Portland, when several names were pro- posed, but without the adoption of any, and eventually, at a meeting held at the Tacoma mill, Mr. Atkinson proposed Sit- well, the name of the then head chief of the Puyallups ; but Tacoma was finally adopted." Let us linger for a moment to give this name, now world-wide known, a thought or two as to its origin and appropriateness. First, for its origin, we quote from Judge Wickersham, who, engaged as he now is in writing an exhaustive work upon the language, traditions, and legends of these Ind- ians, makes his evidence on this point conclusive. He says :
" The Puyallup-Nisqually Indian name for Mount Tacoma" (and, consequently, that of the city which adopted it)-" beyond any question is 'Tacobet,' while the Klicketat rendering is ' Tahoma.' This is authoritative and to be relied on. I hold many certificates to its truth, and shall collect one from each source and each band of Indians."
In this connection the following curious affidavit is interest- ing, and shows that in Judge Wickersham we have a historian who, lawyer-like, is determined to take nothing on hearsay, so he fortifies his nomenclature with the sworn certificate of seven " original settlers," who, whatever their native failings, must be admitted to have made " their mark." It runs as follows :
" PUYALLUP RESERVATION, October 9, 1892.
" We, the undersigned, Indians belonging to the Puyallup Reservation, do say, That the Nisqually-Puyallup name for Mount Tacoma is Ta-co-bet. The Klicketat name is Ta-ho-ma. The Indian name of Mount Baker is Co-ba ; of Mount Adams, Pah-to, and of Mount St. Helens, Sench or Seng. Signed : George Leschi, aged forty years ; Bill James, Jack Simmons, William Bob, Bill Petowow, George Walker, and Velni Jim." Put a cross between and add " his mark" (X) above and below each of these native gentlemen's signatures-the art of writing having been omitted in the list of their accomplishments-and their testimony is complete, even without the addenda of the judge, who adds : " All in the presence of James Wickersham."
The interpretation of this name, however differently it may be spelled, or, rather, pronounced, in the original, has but one interpretation, which we regret was not added to the affidavit of
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the seven. It is, as we have elsewhere suggested, not only romantic but full of practical meaning, as well as of unrhymed poetry. It is, indeed, all that the author claimed for it when, writing a few years since, beneath the inspiration of its shadows, he wove his thought of Tacoma versus Rainier into the following lines :
We'll cling to no name save its title of old, When sunrise first gilded its summit with gold, Smiting the robe by the frost spirits given, Christened by tears from the azure fields riven. By mortal well named, for its meaning appears
In the snow-crested bosoms Tacoma uprears, For those Indian accents that liquidly flow
Mean " nourishing mother of valleys below,"
Whose breasts feed the fountains and sweeten the corn By streamlets that trickle through rifts water-worn.
Being thus appropriate and mellifluous, it is hardly to be wondered at that the good people of the City of Destiny stand proudly and uncompromisingly both by the prophetic and native appellations of their much-loved city.
To return : " A short time afterward the general moved his family, consisting of a wife and three children, to Tacoma, where they took possession of a log cabin which the general had erect- ed for them in what was afterward known as Old Woman's Gulch, opposite the coal bunkers. A week later Mr. Ferry came to Commencement Bay to visit his father-in-law. There were then but two ways of getting from Portland to Tacoma- the one by trail through the forest, the other by water via Vic- toria-a route which Mr. Ferry selected as being the most direct and comfortable. The schedule of fares in those days is pleas- antly suggestive of both difficulty and distance to be overcome. The tariff by water was as follows : From Portland to Victoria, $36 ; from Victoria to Vashon Island, $9; thence to Tacoma, about three miles out of the regular route to Olympia, $9, giv- ing a total of $54"-a sum of money for which a deal of trans- portation, with every modern convenience, could be obtained in what is sometimes termed by lovers of the uncomfortable an- tique " these degenerate days."
Upon arriving at Tacoma, the general's biographer informs us with a quaint sense of humor, "the shores were so heavily timbered that some difficulty was experienced in finding 'the
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city,' which consisted of two cabins-Carr's and General McCarver's-but Mr. Carr set fire to a stump and discharged his rifle, whereupon the steamer, being thus directed, stopped and sent a boat ashore with Mr. Ferry and wife. Communica- tion between the two cabins, though separated by less than a mile, was entirely by water ; so dense was the undergrowth that it was impossible to traverse the shore. From this time on the population of the infant colony increased, but only by driblets. Hanson, Ackerson & Co. were persuaded to come to Tacoma and erect a mill. Then other settlers followed, and the baby town began to put on an air of prosperity. Carr, Steele, and McCarver laid out the original town plot, covering about sixty acres, which includes Carr's five-acre tract. Steele sold his interest to his partners, and the general went vigorously to work to accomplish the cherished object of his endeavors-the establishment of Tacoma City as the terminus of the great Northern Pacific Rail- road. Having by this time succeeded in interesting a number of railroad men in his enterprise, he bought for the railroad com- pany large tracts of what was subsequently known as New Tacoma." Let the reader imagine with what joy, after years of unceasing and almost superhuman toil and endurance, the gen- eral received the following telegram, the original of which is still cherished in the archives of the McCarver family :
" KALAMO, July 1, 1873.
" To GENERAL M. M. MOCARVER :
" We have located the terminus on Commencement Bay. " R. D. RICE, " J. C. AINSWORTH, Commissioners."
This was the first announcement of their decision, and was sent to the general as a special compliment.
If, as we have surmised, the general's fancy dreamed out the accomplished details of the city yet to be as he sat in the sad- dle, resting his weary steed on that memorable morning when he first gazed from the hill-tops on the wide waters of the bay as they revealed themselves through the forest aisles, whose pillars were the pine trunks, what must have been the enlargement of that prophetic vision when he read the fulfilment of his long- cherished hopes in the words of the telegram we have recorded ? Did Anticipation and Realization join hands and meet in fond
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accord, or was there, as is described to have been the feeling of depression that haunted Mungo Park upon accomplishing the discovery of the sources of the Nile, a sense of hollowness and disappointment, of something lacking in the hour of his victory, a vacuity so marked that we are told of the great explorer :
" He wept, the stars of Afric's heaven Beheld his blinding tears, E'en on the spot where fate had given The meed of toiling years" ?
Who shall say ? Whatever may have been General McCarver's sensations, Tacoma certainly had nothing to cry for. Her future was assured, and her fair sister of Seattle was for the time being left to " wear the willow" of desertion and despair.
It is needless to say that a vast impetus was given to the City of Destiny by this decision. Tacoma, the coy beauty of the forest, was no longer the suitor but the sought. Her in- habitants increased in number during a single month from 200 to 1000. In the language of the stock market, Tacoma was " looking up," and fortunately not in the sense in which the writer once heard "looking up" applied by a distinguished divine to the condition of a church, financially and spiritually speaking on its last legs, of which the reverend humorist de- clared that the parish of Zionzebra must be " looking up," being flat on its back, and consequently obliged to look upward to heaven, its only hope for help or consolation. Then, to cloud this bright vista of profit and speculation in city lots, came the announcement of Jay Cooke's failure, the apparent collapse of the railroad scheme for which this firm had been furnishing the funds. This bid fair to relegate the city to its former position of a struggling frontier settlement. Figuratively speaking, poor Tacoma might well sit weeping beside the waters of Commence- ment Bay and hang her harp, or what would answer just as well, the nice maps of the real estate speculators, upon the branches of the pines that overhung its depths and weep her fill. Well might she lament, but a day ago the promised and ex- pectant bride of that lusty and wealthy young suitor, that heir to so many rich expectations, the gallant Northern Pacific, already on his way to meet her, and now, almost in the hour of her espousals, to be disappointed and abandoned. The scoff of Seattle and the recipient of but one kind of sympathy which
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might be relied on as entirely sincere-that is to say, the con- dolences of her common sufferers, the lot and land holders specu- lating for a rise, who thought, poor deluded souls, that their financial greatness was full surely a-ripening, when there fell upon their schemes that chilling frost of the great failure of Jay Cooke & Co., with the collapse of the railroad, whose bonds were no longer negotiable. But Tacoma was not destined to entire disappointment nor to die a neglected old maid. The match with the Northern Pacific was not yet " declared off," it was only deferred by circumstances, for the present beyond her suitor's control. It was, however, to be a long engagement ; four or five years were to elapse, during which Tacoma saddened and aged a little, perhaps, suffering, as such fiancées are apt to do, from that " hope deferred which sickens the soul." But at length the happy event was duly solemnized. Tacoma, the wil- derness bride, bashfully expectant, met her lusty lover as he came wading across the " tide flats" to meet her, not in gallant style, but clinging to his trestle-work, and puffing and wheezing as he hurried along, more like an asthmatic old fellow than a suitor eager to embrace his bride. Then came the celebration, to the wedding march of the clang of bell and trumpet blare and the racket of every serviceable gun in town, while the pines still unfelled waved their approbation, and Mount Tacoma looked smilingly on, and from her foothills furnished the flowers that naturally graced so auspicious an occasion.
But the father who should have given her away-the grand old pioneer, who had worked through weary years to bring about so desirable a union-was, alas, not there to witness the final consummation of his most ardent desires. He had gone up higher, no longer to found cities on earth, but to become, we may believe, a welcome resident in that city " not made with hands, eternal in the heavens-the New Jerusalem, whose streets are paved with gold and whose eternal radiance is 'the presence of the Lord.' "
His biographer thus narrates the close of General McCarver's most eventful career :
" In 1875, while on a trip to the newly discovered coal fields of the Upper Puyallup, General McCarver contracted a cold, which, after a fortnight's illness, resulted in his death, on April 17th. His life for half a century was full of action, events, and
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excitements, was earnest and useful, and left many a mark be- hind him which will endure for all time to come. He was one of the men who build great cities and make States and empires."
Truly does he rest from his labors ; but Tacoma cherishes the fact with pride that the scene of his last and most suc- cessful efforts is still the residence of his widow, Mrs. Julia A. McCarver, herself an immigrant and pioneer of early days, for years a dweller in the wilderness, exposed to all its perils, and patiently enduring with her noble husband the privations of the frontier, yet hoping, sometimes almost against hope, for the dawning of brighter days. Universally respected and revered, she links the old time with the new. Her perfectly pre- served faculties make her memories of the past both interesting and historically valuable ; and, best of all, she possesses such sweetness of manner and amiability of disposition that no one can meet without learning to love " old lady McCarver."
And now, by way of preface to the further description which the largeness of our theme must accord to the City of Des- tiny, permit us a word or two of explanatory remark. The author of this history is, or ought to be, better acquainted with Tacoma than with any other of her sister cities of Puget Sound. He should, therefore, from personal residence and regard be able to speak fully and frankly of her defects, as well as of her won- derful progress, acquired wealth, and extraordinary advantages. We propose, then, to treat our subject faithfully-not with the flatteries of an injudicious friend, but rather as a wise physician, who, if his art compel him to apply knife or caustic, does so, not to inflict pain, but with an honest desire to relieve or cure. Tacoma, to speak figuratively, was, so far as the " new city"' is concerned, a sufferer from infant overcoddling. Wedded to the Northern Pacific, with whom she is now more than half inclined to quarrel, and from whom, when the irritating question of ex- cessive freight charges are discussed, she is well disposed to di- vorce herself, and having the Tacoma Land Company, in more re- spects than one, for her dam, she would have been sturdier and more self-reliant at an earlier period if less cared for and nourished by outside influence. While it cannot be denied that her in- fancy was not always a promising one, being subject to fits, with critical periods, in her young childhood, when the prospects of dying from inanition seemed highly probable, she found the two
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crutches of which we have spoken so convenient and reliable that she began to think she could not walk without their aid. She had some excuse for this, perhaps, naturally dreading as she did the return of the clouds after the rain-those stormy days of financial depression when lot-holders acknowledged they were " land poor," and would have been glad to have realized even at a loss ; when Pacific Avenue was little better than a blazed trail or the primitive Boston cow-path, and the present alphabet of the hillside streets was a thing unknown save to the nicely drawn maps of the Tacoma Land Company. Now, this Land Company comes in for a word or two here. It claims to have made the city. We beg to differ. Tacoma made the Land Company ; accepting the niggardly policy of this corporation, which, with a capital of $1,000,000, purchased, with the railroad at its back, three thousand acres within the corporate limits and thirteen thousand of outlying adjacent land, and then accorded streets of sixty and eighty feet, intersected by alleys of the ridicu- lous dimensions of forty feet in width, while they cut down their lots to only 120 X 25 feet, giving twelve to a block, and a consequent frontage between streets of only three hundred feet. These lots were sold upon apparently favorable terms to the purchaser, with a proviso as to building, which was practically a dead letter. In consequence, some fine avenues have been spoiled by the unsightly appearance of a dozen houses-small tenements-crowded into one block, when a more liberal front- age, like that of Seattle, would have enforced fewer and more substantial residences. This company did one good thing-it built the Tacoma Hotel at a cost of $250,000, and is erecting a still greater hostelry at an estimated expenditure of $750,000. It stands on a commanding site, will be five stories high, and a magnificent structure. But not to dwell upon this matter longer, we will sum it up briefly thus : If the Tacoma Land Company has in any way aided the progress of Tacoma -- which, taking all in all, we gravely doubt-it has been blessed in the giving, for it has reaped a hundredfold.
In the " dark days" to which we have referred, some there were who were then regarded by their fellows as "lucky" in selling out their realty, getting dollars where hundreds and even larger advances were afterward easily obtained for the same property. Others again, unable to help themselves, were
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obliged to hold, much against their will, grumbling at paying taxes on what would never be remunerative. Yet these men, forced into plutocracy, and made millionaires in spite of their foreboding, loved to pride themselves upon their wise foresight and financial ability. Some of these rich realizers-we are happy to say but a few -- who had the greatness of wealth thus thrust upon them, became, in their greed of inordinate gain, the worst enemies of Tacoma's progress and financial development. They seemed to suffer from an insanity of money-getting. As if anxious to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs, they ad- vanced rents so rapidly on hastily erected structures and to such an exorbitant extent that their yearly income from such invest- ments exceeded, in one instance at least, the original value of the property they thus leased. This was particularly true of one man-a former mayor. Then, too, these rents were a con- stant drain, being invariably collected monthly in advance ; and the landlords being unwilling to lease for longer periods than the current month, it left the tenant at the mercy of the owner, whose rapacity might at any moment so increase his terms as to render necessary the surrender of the tenement. This narrow- minded and mistaken policy worked much evil to the future of the city. Good men of small means but business talent and enterprise flocked in, looked over the ground, were satisfied of its capabilities, desired to locate, but were discouraged and disheartened on the threshold by rentals, both business and residential, which would absorb the whole profits of their trade. They consequently went elsewhere, literally driven away by short-sighted property hold- ers, some of whom lived to regret their action in the depression following the boom. They forgot that as a general principle a man would rather work for himself than his landlord. We may as well look the ugly fact squarely in the face that the City of Destiny lost, through the inability of intended settlers to ob- tain proper facilities at reasonable rates, at least twenty per cent of possible population. And all this she owes to a few who, having known the time when it was hard enough for them to earn their own daily bread, forgot, in the hour of their unlooked- for prosperity, the duty "to live and let live," thus driving away not only many desirable residents, but a considerable in- flux of capital.
But if the fortunes of the City of Destiny seemed at one
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time only destined to decay, there was a good time coming. and even then at hand, when the Northern Pacific, after much ap- parent doubt and no little coquetting, finally yielded, through the blandishments of General McCarver's match-making, to Tacoma's superior charms-a union which brought with it not only vast possibilities of future advantage, but actually dow- ered the bride with millions, to be presently expended in the ex- tensive and manifold improvements necessary to the equipment of the western terminus of this gigantic undertaking.
Tacoma at that time found herself, when financially ailing, provided, so to speak, with two physicians, one the Northern Pacific and the other its ally and twin, the Tacoma Land Com- pany, both of whom prescribed the " gold cure," and adminis- tered liberal doses to their interesting patient. Then came the boom, whose existence, unmistakably present, was as religiously denied. Maps, circulars, and rose tinted statements-yet in many instances less extravagant than the truth might have war- ranted-were scattered broadcast over the land by agents anx- ious to earn their commissions or landholders even more desirous to convert their wild land, still verdantly pine-encumbered, into another kind of greenbacks. Capital was attracted. Money, weary of five per cent, and anxious to realize fifteen, poured in by the thousands. Men no longer walked, but ran. Women caught the financial fever, and from the washerwoman in the gulch to the diamond-hung dweller at " The Tacoma," all went "lot crazy," and for the most part did well. Men who had " scratched gravel" for the railroad and kept peanut-stands built branch railroads for themselves. Teamsters declined $5000 for a business location because they wanted $6000, and got it. If a broker went to the owner to ask the price of a Pacific Avenue lot for a possible purchaser, he was not infrequently told, “I will take $20,000 to-day spot cash, but the price will be $22,000 to-morrow," and he often made money by waiting. The auditor and his assistants were worked beyond their strength. Com- panies were formed to examine titles, and abstracted hundreds from the pockets of willing clients. Real estate men were driven to death and buyers more anxious to purchase than hold- ers to dispose of their property. Buildings went up by the thousand. Everywhere was heard the sound of the hammer or the grating of the saw. It was no longer a question where to
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get employment, but how to obtain help. No mechanic was without work. Every lumber mill was driven to the utmost of its capacity-the tree of to-day was the house of to-morrow. The influx of immigrants and prospectors was something tre- mendous-far more than the town could accommodate. Re- spectable men with money in their pockets walked the streets all night because every hotel and lodging-house was crowded to its fullest capacity. Others more fortunate found tent covering or camped on vacant lots. Private residences were besieged with prayers if only for shelter and sleeping-room. Lots once count- ed dear and hard to get rid of at $100 now suddenly materialized into bargains at $1000 each ; and the man who sold generally went round town next day regretting that he had not held on and got as much as the party he sold to. And yet, with all this, there was little or no misrepresentation ; the agent or owner's inducement to buy being summed up in the curt sug- gestion, " Take it or leave it, just as you please." Many doubt- ers who came to scoff remained to pray, throwing prudence to the winds, and joining with as little delay as possible the army of land-seekers. Then. there came the reaction, which ever fol- lows either panic or inflation, and from which the city has not yet fully recovered. People began to ask themselves, " Is there real value here ? Did I not pay too much when I gave $1000 a front foot for a lot on Pacific Avenue, entirely unimproved ?" And he certainly did then. In the mean while, however, fine buildings went up, lots were cleared, residences built, streets opened and sidewalks laid, metropolitan improvements of all kinds made, so that to-day this apparently paradoxical condi- tion of things exists in Tacoma realty : Three years ago she had a lively market, based upon fictitious values ; to-day she has a quiet one with a real value, exceeding the prices paid during the prevalence of the boom. Then, too, there has been a lack of wisdom and certainly of unity of purpose in the municipal gov- ernment-a want, perchance, lately much improved-of clear- headed, business-like treatment of the needs and means by which those needs should be best supplied-in short, that hard common- sense which the average " city father" is anxious to bring into his own affairs, but too often neglects to secure for the munici- pality. We may not dwell longer upon the shadow side of the shield, but will venture the suggestion that what Tacoma most.
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