Famous for the ever ambient scent well-known as "The aroma of Tacoma" noticed driving Interstate 5 caused by the presence of paper-mills, industry and waste treatment plants in close proximity to the freeway. It is this fact that also earns the city lesser nicknames like: T-town or The armpit of Washington.

Another 'claim' to fame is they are the "America's #1 wired city" (this is perpetually displayed on the Tacoma Dome readerboard visible from I-5)due to the municipal electric company, Tacoma Power, getting into the broadband business by building a fiber-optic infrastructure from scratch and launching Click! Network, providing direct competition with @Home. The first city in America to take on a private cable company.

Tacoma is also the place that was famous for the old Tacoma Narrows Bridge, nicknamed Galloping Gertie* that blew down in a windstorm on November 7th, 1940 due to poor aerodynamic engineering in regards to crosswinds...not to mention it is the K5 logo.

Tacoma, like many cities in the Pacific Northwest, congealed around a mill -- in this case, a lumber mill, in 1853. The mill attracted the Northern Pacific Railroad, and Tacoma's fate as a major trade hub was set in steel.

The railroad came to Tacoma's Commencement Bay in 1872. A dozen years later, Commencement Bay began receiving shipments of tea from "the Orient." Official recognition of the City of Tacoma came one year later. Fourteen years after that, in 1887, Northern Pacific lay down rails across the Cascades, spurring the city's fivefold population boom.

Since its founding, Tacoma has nurtured its successful economic pairing of shipping with industrial manufacturing.

Linguists agree that the name Tacoma is derived from a Native American name for Mount Rainier, but sources disagree as to whether it's from "Tacobet," meaning "Mother of the Waters," or "Ta-ho-mah," meaning "snowy mountain."