Job Carr arrives at future site of Tacoma on Commencement Bay on December 25, 1864.

  • By David Wilma
  • Posted 11/29/2002
  • HistoryLink.org Essay 5018
See Additional Media

On December 25, 1864, Job Carr arrives at the future site of Tacoma on Commencement Bay. He will file a 168-acre claim to land at a site the Nisqually and Puyallup Peoples call Shubahlup or sheltered place. The confluence of two creeks produced a small lagoon protected by a sand bar where the natives beach canoes. Carr is the first permanent Euro-American settler in Tacoma, after the abandonment of earlier claims in 1855.

Carr was an invalided veteran of the Union Army from Indiana who came west to seek opportunities. He was riding with several other men in a canoe on a fishing expedition from Steilacoom when he saw the mouths of the creeks and the lagoon, and shouted, "Eureka! Eureka!" Carr soon moved onto the claim with a yellow cat named Tom and built a cabin. Other settlers had claimed land nearby, but left the area after the Treaty Wars of 1855-1856. Carr's two sons Howard and Anthony joined him in 1866. Anthony had been a topographical photographer for the Union Army, and took many photos of early Tacoma. Eventually the Job Carr claim became Tacoma's Old Town.


Sources:

Murray Morgan, Puget's Sound: A Narrative of Early Tacoma and the Southern Sound (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979), 139-144.


Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. Click the icon for more info. Please note that this Creative Commons license applies to text only, and not to images. For more information regarding individual photos or images, please contact the source noted in the image credit.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Major Support for HistoryLink.org Provided By: The State of Washington | Patsy Bullitt Collins | Paul G. Allen Family Foundation | Museum Of History & Industry | 4Culture (King County Lodging Tax Revenue) | City of Seattle | City of Bellevue | City of Tacoma | King County | The Peach Foundation | Microsoft Corporation, Other Public and Private Sponsors and Visitors Like You