When the Northern Pacific Railroad laid its final tracks within the fledgling hamlet of Tacoma, it brought opportunity and wild characters by the car full. Seemingly overnight, the quiet Puget Sound village transformed into a booming metropolis and eccentric playground with its fair share of growing pains. On one unlucky evening, residents awoke to the cries of a man who fell into the sewers after a road collapsed. Tacoma's first school avoided demolition for a time thanks to a band of enterprising tramps who converted the place of learning into Hotel de Gink, complete with unique minstrel show. Local author and guide Karla Stover explores these and many more stories of the quixotic and curious history of the City of Destiny.
Jail breaks, kidnappings, and a cult leader.Tacoma, the city where the rails meet the sails, has always been a place of innovation and rule-breakers. When the railroad came in the 19th century, business boomed, and so did smuggling, bootlegging, and prostitution. Men such as Peter Sandberg walked the line between criminal and respectable. Police in the growing town had their hands full not just with human criminals, but stray cows, ducks, and the occasional bear. Rumor has it that in the 1920s, gangsters Lucky Luciano and Frank Nitti were sent to cool their heels in the port city and may have been behind a smoke bomb attack on a movie theater.Join author Karla Stover as she delves into the wild and colorful past of the City of Destiny.
"In 1882, less than ten years after the Northern Pacific Railroad established a terminus on Commencement Bay and helped create a city called New Tacoma, the community is thriving. Stores, stables, a new hospital, and the beginnings of a hotel to rival San Francisco's Cliff House are going up. In town, horse-drawn street cars are pulled on gravel roads, and there is even the beginning of a new telephone system. In Nell Tanquist's opinion, the town has everything it needs to rival nearby Portland-almost everything, that is, except a dress-making establishment. Nell wants to create clothes for beautiful women and clothes to make plain women look beautiful, but sewing by hand will only take her so far, and the one thing she lacks to become a proper dressmaker is a sewing machine. To earn money, she works at any job that comes her way; taking an uncomfortable and unforgettable wagon ride to nearby Steilacoom to sell things she's crocheted; serving punch at what begins as an elegant "at-home" party that turns into something less than genteel; and working at the Halstead Hotel. As welcome summer weather warms the town, she also finds time for fun-taking her sister to the pantomime and going to a tea party, and for a romance that threatens to scuttle her dream. A picnic with her friends on Commencement Bay nearly turns deadly, and an attempted kidnapping she witnesses on a dark and rainy night takes her into uncharted territory. Mr. Singer's Seamstress is full of pioneers, Chinese laborers, and members of the Puyallup Indian tribe-all people who settled New Tacoma. Most of all, though, it's Nell's story: the story of a girl determined to buck convention and follow her own path"-- Provided by publisher
