Old Tacoma, Pierce County, Washington

Old Tacoma Pierce County, Washington

Mapped Location

Old Tacoma: The mapped location is an approximation and should not be used for navigation or wayfinding.

Information

General information on Old Tacoma

Feature Type: Place

Official, historical, colloquial and alternative toponyms for Old Tacoma

A brief list of names that this geographic feature has been named

Name	Description
Old Tacoma	Official

Origin Notes and History of Old Tacoma

References to Old Tacoma that document the origin of its place name

TACOMA, principal city of Pierce County, on Commencement Bay, now known as Tacoma Harbor. The name is said to be of Indian origin, but its source and meaning have been the subjects of much debate and disputation. Of all those who have written on the subject, the best authority is undoubtedly Thomas W. Prosch. A pioneer newspaper man with a bent toward history, he had the advantage accompanying such training. Furthermore, on September 12, 1877, he was married to Miss Virginia McCarver, whose father, General Morton Matthew McCarver, reputed founder of the City of Tacoma, had been dead only two years at the time of his daughter's wedding. Mr. Prosch had thus entered upon access to family traditions and records. In 1906 and 1909, Mr. Prosch wrote and published two books -- McCarver and Tacoma, and The Conkling-Prosch Family -- which he tells with clearness and frankness how General McCarver founded and named Tacoma and how a contention over the naming arose at the very beginning. He shows the first settler of Tacoma to have been Nicholas Delin, who arrived in 1852 and began a small water-power sawmill. Peter Judson and family, members of the famous party of immigrants who crossed the Naches Pass in 1853, were the next to settle on the bay. There were others who found employment in and around the mill. When the Indian war broke out in 1855, the white people left the bay and Mr. Delin sold his mill to J. L. Perkins, he to Milas Galliher, the last owner being Frank Spinning. For several years prior to 1864, the south side of the bay was deserted. On Christmas day of 1864, Job Carr settled there. His family are often counted the first settlers of Tacoma. In 1868, General McCarver arrived looking for a townsite that would serve as the terminus of the proposed Northern Pacific Railroad. He bought most of Job Carr's claim and acquired other lands. He had financial associates in Portland. The first plat of the proposed town bore the name "Commencement City," a name derived from that of the bay. This plat was not filed of record. On Friday, September 11, 1868, Philip Ritz arrived at the MçCarver home. He was gathering information for the Northern Pacific Railroad Company and had heard of General McCarver's proposal to build a town. He wanted to suggest a name He was enthusiastic about the book The Canoe and the Saddle, by Theodore Winthrop, in which it was said the Indians knew Mount Rainier by the name of Tacoma. He was eloquent in advocating that name for the town. Mr. Prosch says sleep was banished from the McCarver home that night and Saturday morning found the family still talking over the new name. (McCarver and Tacoma, page 164.) The associates in Portland accepted General McCarver's suggestion that the new name be put upon the plat instead of "Commencement City" and the naming was accomplished. Mr. Prosch says: "The Indian name for the land taken by the Carrs was Chebaulip. None of the citizens heeded that, and as the Indians themselves had little regard for their own names, and were always willing to adopt those of the whites instead, Chebaulip was passed and forgotten" (McCarver and Tacoma, pages 162-163.) A later and more extended publication is Tacoma, Its History and Its Builders, A Half Century of Activity, by Herbert Hunt, published in Chicago in 1916. Mr. Hunt devotes pages 134 to 141 to a discussion of the name. It does not differ materially in results from the record of Thomas W. Prosch. However, he says (page 135): "That it was favorably received may be assumed from the fact that Anthony Carr, M. M. McCarver, John W. Ackerson and C. P. Ferry each has claimed the honor of applying it to 'Chebaulip'." The author examines each of the claims carefully and also calls attention to the facts that a hotel in Olympia and a lodge of Good Templars had each been known by the name Tacoma some months before it was applied to the new town. These two names probably emanated from the same book by Theodore Winthrop. In 1908, Benjamin C. Harvey, of Tacoma, collected much material on the name which was published in Tacoma in 1914. (Washington State Historical Society Publications, 1907-1914, Volume II., pages 440-464.) His work was in the interest of changing the name of Mount Rainier to "Mount Tacoma." Of course many references are there made to the origin and meaning of the word. One of the published letters is from Dr. Charles M. Buchanan, for many years in charge of the Tulalip Indian Reservation. He was the greatest authority yet developed on the Indian languages and dialects of Puget Sound. In one of his letters to Mr. Harvey, he says Tacoma is not at all a local word but an Algonkin word meaning "near to heaven," and he calls attention to many uses of the word in various forms east of the Rocky Mountains. There are many meanings given for the word, such as "nourishing breast," "mother of waters," "frozen waters." Several writers, in the correspondence referred to, suggest that Mr. Winthrop probably heard the Indians use the Chinook Jargon word T'kope meaning "white." (Shaw's The Chinook Jargon, page 27.) Mr. Buchanan thinks it quite likely as the explosive pronunciation of T'kopt by the Indian would somewhat resemble the white man's pronunciation of Tacoma.

Edmond S. Meany in Origin of Washington Geographic Names

Meany, Edmond S., Origin of Washington Geographic Names, 1923 University of Washington, pp 299-301 | Origin of Washington Geographic Names

Pierce County

Political Boundaries

Last updated: 2017-06-29