Donald R. Tjossem Livres

Preceding the state of Washington's admittance to the United States in 1889, Tacoma, located south on Puget Sound, was officially incorporated on November 12, 1875, after the Northern Pacific Railway determined that Tacoma should be the western terminus of its transcontinental line. With this decision, the city began its transformation into the "City of Destiny" and allowed farm products and manufactured items to be brought across the country and shipped to Asia and anywhere on the Pacific Rim. Known for its fishing and logging industries, Tacoma prides itself on being the original world headquarters for the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company and the birthplace of Bing Crosby. Today, Tacoma has a population that exceeds 200,000 and is the third-largest city in Washington, preceded by Seattle and Spokane.

When the first Tacoma Narrows Bridge opened on July 1, 1940, the bridge was in use for 130 days before it collapsed due to faulty engineering and high winds. A decade later, following World War II, the second Tacoma Narrows Bridge opened, and it is still in use today. However, due to a population increase over the bridge's 57 years of use, an additional bridge was opened in 2007 to alleviate increasingly high traffic. The completion of the third bridge allowed vehicle speed to increase from less than 25 miles per hour to the present speed of 60 miles per hour during commuting times. Today, sections of the original bridge that was opened in 1940 and is pictured on the cover are still submerged in Puget Sound and were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.

This book contains images of many of the mountains and views that are available to be climbed in Washington State. Washington's mountains have been used for many years as a training ground for major international mountain climbing expeditions. The very first Americans to climb Mount Everest trained on the mountains of Washington State. Many of these scenes have never been seen by the casual hiker or climber, merely because they cover such a large geographic area of the state and are otherwise very remote.

Gig Harbor, located in southern Puget Sound, received its name from the Wilkes Expedition in 1841. History indicates that the captain's gig led the expedition into this small harbor during a storm that came up quite suddenly, hence the name, "Gig." Following the Native Americans, the early settlers were fishermen, farmers, boatbuilders, and lumbermen. Gig Harbor was dependent mostly upon land and water travel until 1940, when the first Narrows Bridge was built; however, it collapsed in less than a year after being built. The replacement bridge was not completed until 1950, but with its construction, Gig Harbor grew very quickly and became a bedroom district of Tacoma and the greater Puget Sound area. Fishing remains one of the mainstays of Gig Harbor commerce, although there are presently no sawmills or lumber mills in the area.

Located in western Washington, Pierce County includes much of the southern Puget Sound shoreline, the entirety of Mount Rainier National Park, and Fort Lewis Base McChord, along with small towns such as Gig Harbor, Fife, Eatonville, Steilacoom, and Puyallup. With unlimited fishing and timber available, the area was first settled in the early 1800s. On December 22, 1852, the county was incorporated and subsequently named after Franklin Pierce, the recently elected president of the United States. Pierce County's development advanced in the following decades with the formation of Frederick Weyerhaeuser's Weyerhaeuser Company in 1900, the making of pleasure craft and fishing vessels for the county's seaport industry, and the creation of naval watercraft for World War II. Today, Pierce County is home to almost 900,000 individuals.