built a handsome church, and endowed the Annie Wright Seminary for girls, and Washington College for boys, with fifty thousand dollars each.
Gas- and water-works were erected, wharves built, and with these things the value of real estate increased. But it again declined, and from 1884 to 1887, while there was a doubt of the final settlement of the question of terminus, there was a continual depression. But when on the 1st of July, 1887, the road was opened to Tacoma the reaction was like the rebound of a bent bow. Sales of real estate were quadrupled in six months, and in another twelve months had quadrupled again, after which they increased by about four million dollars annually. In 1887 the population was about nine thousand; in 1889, thirty thousand j in 1890, forty thousand one hundred and sixty-five, and Pierce County, until recently sparsely settled, contained fifty thousand and sixty-five inhabitants.
Without stopping to inquire what brought all these people together here in so short a space, or whence they came, let us consider what they have done. They have covered the land as far as the view extends and for some distance back from the bay with tasteful homes on cleanly, sidewalked, and sewered streets. To do this at the rate of thousands of houses a year implies an enormous amount of material and an incalculable amount of labor in putting it in shape. The city's expenses for street improvements in 1889 were three hundred and fiftythree thousand seven hundred and eighteen dollars and ninetysix cents.
In its infancy the city was compelled to import all kinds of manufactures with the exception of lumber, coal, wheat, hops, and hides, but the tide is turning, and already there are machineshops, locomotive-works, iron- and brass-founderies, furniturefactories, sewer-pipe, tile, and pottery works, brick-yards, flourmills, shingle-mills, sash- and door-factories, with many minor industries, the number of which is daily increasing.
Tacoma's public school property is valued at two hundred thousand dollars. A Methodist university is being erected, which has been endowed by a gift of seventy-five thousand dollars from citizens of Tacoma. The Pacific Lutheran University is to be here. There is also a business college, a Catholic
