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 streetcar stop at the intersection of North Twenty-sixth and Proctor Streets�near the racetrack�businesses began to line the thoroughfare. By 1900, houses had been constructed within walking distance...

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. Situated on the deepwater shoreline of Commencement Bay to ship timber from the vast tracts surrounding it, 'Old Tacoma' was bypassed by the Northern Pacific terminus in favor of 'New Tacoma' a few mi...

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 the boundaries of the United States following negotiations with Great Britain in 1846. Drawn to the deep waters of the south shore of the bay, the Northern Pacific Railroad established its t...