Old Tacoma is a neighborhood of the
north end of
Tacoma, Washington
Tacoma ( ) is the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. A port city, it is situated along Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Pa ...
, more commonly known as Old Town.
History
Old Town owes its name to the fact that it was the location of the original settlement called "Tacoma". In 1865,
Job Carr built a cabin near the shore in anticipation of future
land speculation
In finance, speculation is the purchase of an asset (a commodity, goods, or real estate) with the hope that it will become more valuable shortly. (It can also refer to short sales in which the speculator hopes for a decline in value.)
Many ...
due to the construction of the
Transcontinental Railroad
A transcontinental railroad or transcontinental railway is contiguous railroad trackage, that crosses a continental land mass and has terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Such networks can be via the tracks of either a single ...
. The original cabin location is marked by a plaque at the base of Carr Street. Job Carr Cabin Museum is a replica of the original, and is situated in Old Town Park. Old Town was sustained in its early days by fishing and lumber mills.
Geography
Old Town was originally a separate community from what is now downtown Tacoma, which was at first called "New Tacoma" before the two communities merged into one.
Today the area features an historical park and a range of restaurants and shops. It is also home to two buildings on the National Historic Registry:
St. Peter's Church, the first church built in Tacoma and now Tacoma's oldest existing building,
and Slavonian Hall. The area is sometimes called
Ruston Way, although the Ruston Way waterside walk spans far beyond the accepted bounds of Old Tacoma.
References
External links
Old Town Business DistrictTacoma Public LibraryHistory Link
North Tacoma, Washington
Neighborhoods in Tacoma, Washington
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