Monday, November 22, 2004

Tacoma

City, seat (1880) of Pierce county, western Washington, U.S., on Commencement Bay of Puget Sound, 30 miles (48 km) south of Seattle. The bay was the starting point (1841) of a U.S. surveying party led by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, who named it Commencement Bay. Settled in 1864, the site was laid out (1868) as Commencement City by General Morton M. McCarver; it was soon renamed Tacoma (an Indian name for Mount