The Forgotten Pioneer Who Built Tacoma
Job Carr arrived in a wilderness with an ox team and a dream of a railroad terminal, only to die with a broken heart as the city he staked rose up to push him aside.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Job Carr passed away on August 10th. He was a pioneer who stood alone with the elements and the tides of what is now Tacoma. He arrived when the region was but a wilderness, taking up a homestead and pre-emption along the waterfront. He lived to see the forest he had entered with difficulty replaced by three square miles of city, with wide streets and avenues reaching out in all directions. He lived to see his solitary cabin crowded upon by modern residences, and to see great railroad and steamboat lines follow him to the place where he had broken the wilderness. This last was what he had prophesied, and now, a broken-down old man, his dream realized, he found his heart soured upon the world. The very madness of life and activity to which he had looked forward were, in their realization, only tokens of his failure and disappointment. He wanted to sell what little holdings were left to him and go as far away as possible. 'I should have been worth a million,' he said. 'I am worth, perhaps, a couple of thousand.' He died at the age of 73, remaining a believer in Spiritualism until the end.
“I should have been worth a million. I am worth, perhaps, a couple of thousand.”
Job Carr’s story of being displaced by the very development he helped initiate resonates powerfully with modern Seattle/Tacoma, where long-time residents are often pushed out by the explosive growth and rising land values they helped facilitate. The bitterness of a pioneer finding himself a stranger in his own city is a recurring theme in the Pacific Northwest’s rapid urban history.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.