Tacoma Historical Society is honored to contribute to this year’s virtual Tacoma Moon Festival with the release of a new virtual tour of the people and places associated with the 1885 Chinese Expulsion. The tour can be explored online from the comfort of your home, or as a walking or driving tour. Click here to get started! The Tacoma Moon Festival is an annual event … Continue reading Virtual Tour: 1885 Chinese Expulsion
A frequent challenge for local history researchers is a lack of first-hand accounts of an event from the past. Perhaps people at the time didn’t recognize that they were living through something significant. Or perhaps they did, and their time and energy was taken up with that something significant, so much that they couldn’t pause to document their experience. With this in mind, we are … Continue reading Capturing Your COVID-19 Stories
The first people I met when I moved into Tacoma’s Lincoln District in 1999 were the owners of Lincoln Hardware, which I quickly learned was a neighborhood fixture with a long history of serving our community. And why did I meet them, rather than other neighbors, first? Because the lock on the front door of my historic home broke, and needed fixing, quick. I walked … Continue reading Ode to Lincoln Hardware
I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream! If you were lucky enough to go to an ice cream shop in the early 1900s, your choices would have been limited to vanilla, chocolate, and Strawberry. But a young man from Tacoma with a passion for ice cream and an inventive flair would soon change all of that. What would arguably became one of the best … Continue reading 31 Flavors From Tacoma
Tacoma is known as the City of Destiny as it was the last stop for the Northern Pacific Railroad but, did you know that the railroad also helped Tacoma become the candy capitol of the world during the early 1900s? Tacoma’s mild climate was ideal for chocolate making, not too hot to melt it and not too cold to crack it. The newly opened direct … Continue reading Sweet Candy Coating
Roses are red, violets are blue, and the Tacoma Rose garden is waiting for you. The rose garden located in Point Defiance Park has been blooming with life every summer since 1895. The man who started this beautiful garden was E. R. Roberts. He was born in North Wales and was no stranger to flowers when he ventured to Tacoma, having trained at many European … Continue reading Stop and Smell the Roses at Point Defiance
Tales of Tacoma 