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Diablo Dam incline railway climbing Sourdough Mountain, 1930. Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives, 2306.
Children waving to ferry, 1950. Courtesy Museum of History and Industry.
Loggers in the Northwest woods. Courtesy Washington State Digital Archives.

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This Week Then

3/28/2024

Opening of baseball season TW Main Image 3/28/2024

News Then, History Now

Doubleheader

April 1 marks two important anniversaries in the early history of Tacoma. The first occurred on April 1, 1852, when Nicolas Delin began constructing a sawmill at the head of Commencement Bay. And on April 1, 1868, developer Morton Matthew McCarver arrived to purchase land for a new townsite, which he called Tacoma City. Within five years he had helped convince the Northern Pacific Railroad to choose Commencement Bay as its western terminus.

Earned Run

On March 31, 1889, Seattle's first electric streetcar took to the streets and was an immediate success. The people of Seattle officially took over operation of the city's streetcar lines on April 1, 1919, but the date of the deed should have given somebody pause. It soon turned out that Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson had paid a grossly inflated price of $15 million and accepted disastrous terms to acquire the private system from the giant utility cartel Stone & Webster, which had gobbled up all local streetcar lines by 1900.

Change Up

On April 1, 1946, shipbuilding industrialist Henry J. Kaiser began aluminum production operations in Mead, just north of his former hometown of Spokane. Kaiser had no experience in the metals industry and many of his peers thought the business would be a failure. Kaiser Aluminum went on to become the country’s third-largest producer of the versatile metal.

Ground Out

On March 29, 1968, the Court C Coffeehouse opened in Tacoma as a gathering place for artists and intellectuals. And speaking of coffee, on March 30, 1971, Jerry Baldwin, Gordon Bowker, and Zev Siegl handed out free sample cups of coffee to their first customers in their new coffee shop near Pike Place Market. They only sold beans for the next decade, but once they began to sell brewed coffee, Starbucks burst onto the world stage.

Wild Pitches

April 1 is a day for pranksters. Please enjoy this reminiscence by Ralph Munro of the time he got fooled by a swinging chandelier in the state Capitol Building. Then read about how Almost Live viewers got tricked into believing that the Space Needle had collapsed. And finally, check out the time that antiwar protestors spoofed the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Opening Lineup

Cities celebrating birthdays this week include Coupeville, whose voters approved city incorporation on April 2, 1910. The neighboring cities of Bellevue and Clyde Hill both incorporated on March 31, 1953. And on March 31, 2003, Spokane Valley incorporated and instantly became the state's ninth-largest city.

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"People ask me what I do in the winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring."

– Rogers Hornsby

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