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Murray Morgan : Puget's Sound: A Narrative of Early Tacoma and the Southern Sound

University of Washington Press, Seattle, Washington, 1979

ISBN 0295956801

8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. K4 - A first edition (no additional printing) hardcover book SIGNED by Murray Morgan on the half-title page in very good condition in good dust jacket that is mylar protected. Dust jacket has wrinkling, chipping, crease, and small tears on the edges, corners, some scattered light scratches, rubbing, scuffing and small tears, tanning, and light shelf wear. Book lightly cocked, bowed, some bumped corners, some wrinkling on the spine, and book have some bumped corners and light cover edgewear, light discoloration and shelf wear. 9.55"x6.5", 360 pages. Satisfaction Guaranteed. With the same ability to make personalities and events come alive that characterizes his classic Skid Road, Murray Morgan here tells the colorful story of southern Puget Sound, where major events of Washington's history took place, and of Tacoma, the area's principal city. This fascinating account begins with a narrative, drawn from the original journals, of the seven days in 1792 when Peter Puget's party, in two small boats, explored and charted the entire Sound south of today's Seattle. Morgan then recounts the difficulties of the early fur traders in establishing communication between the Sound and the Columbia River, the creation of the Hudson's Bay Company on the Nisqually, and the arrival in the 1840s of the Americans: missionaries, naval officers, and, in 1845, the Bush-Simmons party. Puget's Sound sheds new light on the Treaty of Medicine Creek, by which the Indians were divested of most of their land, and on the Indian war that followed - a war that resulted in revision of the treaty. All early settlers on the Sound longed for railroad connection with the East. It was a dream that motivated Job Carr, Old Tacoma's first settler, who took a claim on Commencement Bay in 1864, and Morton Matthew McCarver, the frontier promoter who bought Carr's land in 1868. But dreaming was not enough. Morgan explains the complicated financial and political maneuvering of the eastern entrepreneurs which pitted {Puget Sound against the Columbia River, Tacoma against Seattle and Portland. Tacoma was designated terminus of the Northern Pacific in 1873, but not until Nelson and Sidney Bennett drove the Stampede Tunnel through the Cascades in 1888, making it possible for freight and passengers to bypass Portland, did Tacoma boom. When it started, growth was extraordinary; in the next fiver years Tacoma nearly caught Seattle in population. The Panic of 1893 destroyed Tacoma's economy and shattered its boom-town confidence. The town suffered massive unemployment and deep social unrest and suffered, too, from its early expulsion of the Chinese, which caused eastern financial centers to think of the city as being at the mercy of anarchists. Between 1893 and 1900, Tacoma lost 16,000 population and the race with Seattle for dominance was over. During the next twenty years Tacoma emerged as the second city on the Sound, with characteristics that would mark her future: an economic reliance on the timber industry; a continuing battle in local government between tolerance and enforcement; and, with the coming of Fort Lewis in 1916, an enduring link with the military, a growth industry that would prove more reliable than railroads. Drawing upon the original journals and reports of explorers, officials, settlers, and businessmen, Morgan tells his story largely in terms of individuals, interweaving portraits of well-known historical figures with those who are more obscure but who have a special significance. He closes with his own personal view of Tacoma as his hometown.. Book Condition: Very Good. Binding: Hardcover. Jacket: Good

First Edition
Signed by Author

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