Page:History of Washington The Rise and Progress of an American State, volume 4.djvu/309

 OF AN AMERICAN STATE 227

R. D. Rice was elected vice-president of the company and John C. Ainsworth of Portland, was made managing director for the western division, and these two officials were charged with the responsibility of finally fixing the terminus. But they gave no intimation for several months of what they intended to do, and meantime they bought all the land on the west shore of Commencement Bay that the company would not acquire through its grant, and which the holders could be induced to part with. They visited the Sound in July and on their return to Kalama on the 14th, telegraphed the directors in New York and General McCarver in Tacoma that they had made choice of Tacoma as the terminus. This report was ratified on September loth, and a land company was formed to own, improve and manage the sale of the town- site.

Up to this time, Tacoma seems hardly to have been taken into account in the contest by any of the other towns. It was as yet scarcely a village. In 1864 Job Carr and his two sons had chosen claims on the west shore of Commence- ment Bay, in the expectation, as it has since been claimed, that a railroad terminus might some time be fixed there. For three years or more they were the only settlers on the harbor. Governor Marshall F. Moore had purchased part of one of their claims but did not live on it, and other people had afterwards taken claims in the neighborhood and ac- quired title to them or taken such steps as they could to acquire it.

In 1867 General Morton M. McCarver, who had come to Oregon with the Burnett-Applegate party in 1843, and afterwards served for a time as speaker of the house of repre- sentatives under the provisional government, and as com- missary-general in the Indian wars, came across the country