Tacoma City Map Poster

About Tacoma

The Tacoma area was originally inhabited by Native Americans, most recently the Puget Sound Tribe. In 1846, the Treaty of Medicine Creek (1854) ceded native claims to the United States Government and settlers arrived soon after. The first white settler in what is now Tacoma was John Low on May 27, 1850; he built a cabin on a claim just south of present downtown Tacoma. Other pioneers followed and settlement began in earnest in September or October 1851 when Dr. Gerrit P Judd and his wife Alta moved from Seattle to an unfinished cabin they had constructed near present 9th Avenue between A Street (now Martin Luther King Jr Way) & B Street (now South 11th St).