Name: Tacoma Curiosities
Brand: Karla Stover
SKU: 9781467135535
Price: 21.99 USD
Availability: InStock

Tacoma Curiosities

9781467135535

$21.99

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.

Portland's Lost Waterfront

9781609495954

$21.99

Today, Portland, Oregon, is a city of majestic bridges crisscrossing the deep swath of the Willamette River. A century ago, riverboat pilots would have witnessed a flurry of stevedores and longshoremen hurrying along the wharves. Situated as the terminus of sea lanes and railroads, with easy access to the wheat fields, sawmills and dairies of the Willamette Valley, Portland quickly became a rich and powerful seaport. As the city changed, so too did the role of the sailor--once bartered by shanghai masters, later elevated to well-paid and respected mariner. Drawing on primary source material, previously unpublished photographs and thirty-three years of waterfront work, local author Barney Blalock recalls the city's vanished waterfront in these tales of sea dogs, salty days and the river's tides.

Tacoma Illustrated

9780738594880

$21.99

The work herewith presented needs little introduction to the citizens of Tacoma, but to the public at large, whose hands it is destined to reach, some explanation may not be out of place. The object of the publication is the embodiment, in concise and correct form, of the rise and progress of a city whose growth in population, trade, manufactures, and whose surrounding resources are almost without parallel. The resources of the State of Washington are first given a space in our columns; then a cursory history of Tacoma and her important interests, followed by full descriptions of these interests, and concluding with histories of her leading business houses. The familiar features of some of our prominent and enterprising citizens will also be recognized in its pages; many others are equally deserving a place in our limited gallery, but further space could not be afforded.

A Brief History of Vashon Island

9781626191693

$24.99

Reachable only by ferry, Vashon Island is a breathtaking rural retreat from the bustling activity of nearby Seattle and Tacoma. The island's first inhabitants, the sx̌ʷəbab", took advantage of its evergreen forests and rich marine resources. In 1792, George Vancouver was the first Anglo to discover the island and named it after Captain James Vashon. By the late 1800s, the first white settlers had established farms and greenhouses that supplied nearby cities with berries, tomatoes and cucumbers. Ferries drove development in the later half of the century, introducing new industries and tourism to the area. While both influenced by and isolated from the mainland, the island developed its own unique character treasured by locals. Merging human and natural history, author Bruce Haulman presents the rich heritage of this thriving community.

Murder & Scandal in Prohibition Portland:

9781467119535

$21.99

The 1917 election of Mayor George Luis Baker ushered a long era of unscrupulous greed into Portland government. While supposedly enforcing prohibition laws, Baker ordered police chief Leon Jenkins to control and profit from the bootlegging market. Baker filled city coffers and his friends' pockets with booze-soaked cash while sensational headlines like the 1929 affair between policeman Bill Breuning and informant Anna Schrader scandalized the city. Maligned in the press, Schrader executed a bitter campaign to recall the mayor. In 1933, a hired gunman murdered special investigator to the governor Frank Aiken a day before he would have filed a report on corruption in the city government. Authors JD Chandler and Theresa Griffin Kennedy unearth the salacious details of Baker's crooked administration in a revelatory account of prohibition in the Rose City.

Murder & Scandal in Prohibition Portland:

Tacoma New Herald Annual

9780738594897

$21.99

"Dear Sir--I have found the place that can become the Greatest City of the World. Hold on there! Laugh if you will after you have read this. The biggest folly is to fool yourself. The best authorities agree that as to climatic conditions, life-supporting soil and wealth-producing lands and waters, the Pacific Ocean and lands on each shore half way across the Continent to the Atlantic are more than twice as great and good as those in, and on, the Atlantic half-way across to the Pacific. . . . No part of America is more blessed by grand watersheds than the North Pacific Coast, and no city gets greater benefit from them than Tacoma. This State of Washington, with the beauty of Switzerland and the fertility of ancient Egypt, with its vast and varied resources, with its rich irrigable eastern half and its western half enjoying a semi-tropical climate, owing to the Japan current, will, when the world's population becomes adjusted, support twenty times its present population in comfort; and, if it had thirty times its present population, it would be more self-sustaining than the original thirteen American States are now. This will be conceded when the life-supporting resources of, and external items that contribute to, the respective districts are weighed and balanced. . . ." Donald Fletcher, Nov. 1, 1906

Lake Oswego Vignettes

9781609495534

$21.99

With tales of a mayor who knew the town's cows by name and a singing pig drunk on moonshine, Marylou Colver captures the quirky anecdotes of Lake Oswego's past. In the twentieth century, visionary real estate developers touted Oregon's Lake Oswego as an ideal place to "live where you play," a reputation the city maintains today. But this playful paradise is a far cry from the small town developed by iron company entrepreneurs in the nineteenth century. Colver, founder of the Lake Oswego Preservation Society, chronicles the transition from gritty to pretty by recounting the people and events that shaped Lake Oswego. From bathing suit bans to a robot circus, enjoy the legacy of unusual facts, some recently discovered, that inspired Lake Oswego Vignettes.

Portland in the 1960s

9781609494711

$21.99

In 1968, Newsweek reported an imminent threat of twenty thousand hippies descending on Portland, Oregon. Although the numbers were exaggerated, Portland did boast a vibrant 1960s culture of disenchanted and disenfranchised individuals seeking social and political revolution. Barefoot and bell-bottomed, they hung out in Portland's bohemian underground and devised a better world. What began in coffee shop conversations found its voice in the Willamette Bridge newspaper, KBOO radio station and the Portland State University student strike, resulting in social, artistic and political change in the Rose City. Through these stories from the counterculture, author Polina Olsen brings to life the beat-snapping Caffe Espresso, the incense and black light posters of the Psychedelic Supermarket and the spontaneous concerts and communal soups in Lair Park.

Hidden History of Tacoma

9781609494704

$21.99

The City of Destiny took shape where rails met sails on the shores of Commencement Bay. When Tacoma was chosen as the Northern Pacific Railroad's terminus, the city rose from the mudflats and took the lead as the Northwest's destination for opportunity. In this collection, discover the city's early notables and uncover the stories behind the historic landmarks. Why did city planners abandon Olmsted's vision? How many war bonds did Lana Turner's kisses buy? Why were vegetarians warned, "Don't drink the water"? Who is the tiny figure with coal black hair and bound feet who haunts Old Tacoma? Local author and guide Karla Stover answers these questions and more as she spins stories from the tomes of Tacoma's past.

Hidden History of Portland, Oregon

9781626191983

$21.99

In this engaging narrative, author JD Chandler crafts a people's history of Portland, Oregon, sharing the lesser-known stories of individuals who stood against the tide and fought for liberty and representation: C.E.S. Wood, who documented the conflict between Native Americans and the United States Army; Beatrice Morrow Cannady, founding member of the Portland NAACP and first African American woman to practice law in Oregon; women's rights advocate Dr. Marie Equi, who performed abortions and was an open lesbian; and student athlete Jack Yoshihara, who, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, was barred from participating in the 1942 Rose Bowl. From scandal and oppression to injustice and the brink of revolution, join Chandler as he gives voice to the Rose City's quiet radicals and outspoken activists.

Seattle and the Orient

9780738594835

$21.99

By way of introduction the writer desires to state that Seattle and the Orient is published to act as an opening wedge into a country up to this time very little known to people residing upon Puget Sound. It is for the purpose of introducing ourselves to the people doing business in Siberia, China, Japan, the China Archipelago, the Philippines and Hawaii, and to eventually open a way by which closer trade relations may be promoted, that this book has been published. The subjects treated are in no instance overdrawn, but are secured by direct contact with the people interested, and are plain matter of fact statements of affairs as they exist in Seattle and in Western Washington. The illustrations shown are the best procurable, and will afford the reader a fair idea of what can be found in the metropolis of America's great Mediterranean. Such a showing as the following pages make cannot help but impress even the most casual observer that Seattle has a future before it of very great magnitude. Unquestionably it is destined to become the largest city upon the Pacific Coast. It has every material advantage to make it so; it has almost every imaginable resource upon which to draw for support; it is the center of one of the greatest lumbering sections in the world; it 'has inexhaustible coal mines; it is the central point from which the gold fields of Alaska and the British Northwest Territory are reached; it is practically the center of all the mineral wealth of the Northwest; and it is moreover the natural geographical entrepot for the great Oriental markets, a fact which in time will make it the greatest shipping port in the United States. An attempt has been made to enumerate its varied resources in succeeding pages, and a story has been told which will prove both interesting and instructive. It has been the aim of the writer to take up the industrial side of Seattle and portray a condition as near the actual as possible.