The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1883-06-02
Our Q9lio.
TACOMA.
City that Threatens IBe Supremacy OI
San Francisco.

A letter from Puget Sound, March %
says:-The great city ON the Pacific coast
is to be Tacoma, the western terminus o
/ the Northern Pacific Railroad. Its present
and future rest on certainties.
San Francisco was founded on chance
the chance of finding placer goldin paying
site and quantity, and the chance that
rock veins of silver and gold would endure
California S placers, except in the mountain.
top blue clay channels, have all been found
and scooped clean. The ComstOck mines
abandoned or unworked, represent the
best condition of California's gambling
labor in rock mining. In the vernacular
of her card gamblers, California is ''played,
and San Francisco is 'played." For back
of the uncertainty of gold and silver in the
rock lies the most terrible of all uncertain
ties to civilized state, the uncertainty of
rain. California cannot count on any crop
whatever except grapes and wine Tacoma,
on the other hand, is in the centre of the
largest and most valuable lumber forests on
the globe Underneath her is the best
bituminous coal in America. 1t outcrops
ten miles behind her. In the Wilkeson
coal field, thirty miles east of her, the
quantity of workable coal in five veins,
aggregating thirty feet, all controlled by
the Northern Pacific Railroad Company,
and therefore all appanage Of Tacoma for
ever, is estimated to be 236, zoe, 900 tons.
In the Green River field, forty-six miles
east of Tacoma, the railroad company 5
veins aggregate fOrty-five feet. Within Il
year the workable thickness Of coal tribu-
tary to Tacoma, and as good as the best
Pittsburgh, and on or near the Northern
Pacific's land grant, has been increased by
discovery from u feet to 81 feet, and in
area in the Wilkeson field alone from
920 acres $3.50. And this wealth of
perfect coal is carried along the line of the
railroad away over the Cascade range and
down its eastern slope. TacOma's coal is
worth ten times over more than all the
gold and silver California ever produced
and San Francisco trafficked in. 1t will
make Tacoma an eternal city Gold made
San Francisco only gaudy, riotous, short
lived gambling saloon. From Tacoma S
coal bunkers will 90 the coal to be con-
sumed on the entire Pacific coast and in
the Sandwich Islands.
And there is iron ore in TacOma's ap-
panage The Wilkeson coal field is already
known to hold an eight feet vein of hema-
tite, and the Green River field twelve
feet vein, each containing sixty per cent of
metal Across the Sound, in the Olympic
range, is unlimited magnetic ore. 1t is
absolutely certain that Tacoma will be the
seat of an enormous industry in iron. We
do not inventory the copper, gold, and AZ
gentiferous galena deposits from Ellenville,
on the east side of the Cascade range, to
the Mt Tacoma foothills, west, said by repu-
table mining experts there to abound more
than in any other part of the United States.
In the waterway from the Pacific Ocean
to the Tacoma docks there is not bar,
rock, reef, or sand bank. The entrance to
Puget Sound is thirteen miles wide and
six hundred feet deep, and this depth and
this roominess are carried from the mouth
of the Straits of Fuca to Commencement
Bay, which is Tacoma's harbor. At her
coal docks at low tide the largest British
ironclad could lie without touching bottom.
No incoming clipper ship need pay dollar
of pilotage or towage.
This unrivalled seaport has a competitor
in Portland, o.. a seaport one hundred
miles from the sea, up muddy branch of
the Columbia River There are numerous
bars between Portland and the mouth Of
the Columbia, which compel costly lighter
age. The Columbia bar is the worst on
the face of the earth. 1t is common for
ships to wait inside a month to get safely
out, and for British ships to beat on and
off outside, yainly trying to get in, till
their crews sicken with scurvy, has been a
frequent incident in the unnatural COM
merce of Portland. The history of the
terrible bar of the Columbia River is a
history of wrecks and ruinous expenses for
pilotage, towage, lighterage, and demurrage.
A railroad running north and south through
Oregon will be extended by connection
this year to Tacoma. This will end the
shipment of wheat to England from Port
land. All of that grain, and the quantity
is enormous, will thereafter be shipped from
Tacoma. But Tacoma is to have two
wheat railroads The short and straight
branch from the Columbia River valley
across the Cascade Mountains to Puget
Sound will carry to Tacoma all the wheat
of eastern Washington Territory, north
eastern Oregon, and Idaho Tacoma will
be the greatest grain-shipping port in the
world. This Cascade branch, moreover,
will, Immediately y on its completion, give
Tacoma an immense trade in coal and lum-
ber eastward to the treeless and fuelless
portion of the Columbia plains.
Her unequalled position and relations,
and the two lines of railroad from the
south and east, will make Tacoma the local
metropolis of an area of territory larger
than that which includes Chicago, Buffalo,
New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Louis
vile, and st. Louis, and back to Chicago.
Nationally, it will be the entreport and
outport for the trade with Japan and China,
to which Tacoma is 600 miles nearer than
San Francisco is.
Puget Sound is ravishingly beautiful
dlCHlpcIdSo IHeTe Is HOt 50 lovely UOuy
of water on the earth. Tourists by tens of
thousands will go yearly to Tacoma, to sail
on this purple sea, through islands ever
green with fir trees, the purple sea but
tressed on the west by the snow peaks of
the Olympian range, and sentried on the
east by the slumbering volcano, Tacoma,
1880 feet high, pyramid of eternal ice
and snow, which gives back to the entranced
beholder the revolving light of day and of
the moonlit night in every color and shade
known to the prism and to art There is
not in all America such superb spectacle
as this snow mountain. And alone of
American mountains it holds in its heart
glacier, as grand and impressive as that of
Mont Blanc. The time will surely come
when our society mob,' which now goes
annually to Switzerland because it is fash
ionable and English to do so, will become
sufficiently Americanized to desire to know
the OaOpranhv of itc Own country Then