Puget Sound is 300 miles nearer Japan, Manila and the Orient than San Francisco. It is 800 miles nearer Alaska than the Golden Gate. Ores for the Tacoma Smelter are brought by rail from Eastern Washington and by water from Alaska; from the islands along the coast of British North America; from British Columbia, Korea, Straits Settlements, Mexico and Central America. Foreign products brought across the pacific for manufacture in the United States, such as raw silk from China and Japan and hemp from Manila, are landed at TACOMA. The rail and water transportation facilities which unite at TACOMA, coupled with its command of raw materials and its wonderful resources of power and coal, make this city a most exceptionally favored point for manufacturing.
1—Equitable Building. 2—National Bank of Commerce Building. 3—Berlin Building. 4—Luzon Building. 5—Fidelity Trust Company’s Building. ]
A resume of TACOMA’S superior advantages for manufacturing would be incomplete without reference to its abundant supply of manufacturing sites. There are twelve square miles of tide and river flats immediately east of the city which, owing to a combination of circumstances, were until recently incapable of private ownership and occupation. At the south end or head of Commencement Bay there is a level plain traversed near its westerly side by the Puyallup River. The lands on the easterly side of the river were for many years set apart by the government as a part of the Puyallup Indian reservation, but recently these have been sold by order of the government. The King County line extended also to the Puyallup River and the tide and river flats at the head of the bay—most advantageously located for commercial and industrial purposes—being without their jurisdiction, were incapable of improvement by the city or Pierce County. But in 1901 the reservation lands were legally annexed to Pierce County, of which TACOMA is the county seat, and the occupation of this enormous area of flat lands adjacent to tidewater has just begun.
A substantial bridge has this year been erected by the city of TACOMA across the Puyallup River at a convenient point for access to the annexed lands from the manufacturing district which occupies the flats west of the Puyallup River. The federal government has made a complete survey of the harbor of TACOMA, the plans for the improvement of which contemplate the construction of a series of waterways extending from deep water in the bay a considerable distance to the south. The City Waterway, which is being dredged to a width of 550 feet and depths increasing as it approaches the bay from fifteen to thirty feet, under a contract awarded by the federal government in January, 1903, extends as far south as Twenty-third Street, or nearly twenty city blocks from the original harbor line. Miles of additional waterfront and wharves will thus be obtained at the head of the bay, exclusive of the natural shore line some ten miles in extent from Brown’s Point to Point Defiance. Railroads and steamships will have direct and immediate access to the very heart of this district. The acquisition and improvement by the construction of roads, bridges and waterways of 6,000 acres of land immediately adjacent to the city, make it possible for many more manufacturers to secure sites and utilize the limitless power resources of TACOMA, the great INDUSTRIAL CITY OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST.