Wonderful Point Defiance Park Tacoma, Washington

Paul Richardson 2012

Sometimes you are just lucky, I guess. We were looking for somewhere not far away to go on a pretty Sunday afternoon in September and found a report in the AAA guidebook for Point Defiance Park in Tacoma, just across the sound from our base in Federal Way. Of course without a boat we had to drive a ways but when we arrived we saw the descriptions didnt do it justice. I am hoping that including some pictures will give you a feeling of this being a place you should visit if the opportunity arises. The first impression is a beautiful one of the large flower garden. The northwest is great for growing roses and they have a big display of them but also huge Dahlias and other beautiful flowers.

Puget Sound

Fort Nisqually is a living history museum. In the spring of 1832, during a routine trip between Fort Langley and Fort Vancouver, Chief Trader Archibald McDonald of the London-based Hudsons Bay Company (HBC) paused for a few days on the Nisqually River. Under orders to find a suitable location for the establishment of a post in the lower Puget Sound region, McDonald supervised the construction of a storehouse and left several servants in charge with a couple of kegs of potatoes, garden seeds and blankets for trade. The following spring McDonald oversaw the construction of a large walled wooden fortification a short distance inland on the grassy plateau east of the original landing site. For the next six years, Fort Nisqually was an outpost of the fur trade that drove the HBC across the North American continent in pursuit of beaver pelts. The main suppliers of the furs were local native tribes who took a fancy to the wool blankets, guns and other manufactured goods offered by the HBC.

The decline of the fur trade in the late 1830s and the high cost of supplying the distant HBC operations spurred the Company to look for new sources of revenue. Fort Nisqually became the headquarters of a subsidiary called the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, formed to oversea the production of grain, produce and livestock for local consumption, as well as export up and down the West Coast. To take advantage of more open land and fresh water, Fort Nisqually was moved inland a mile from its original site in the early 1840s. The fort standing today in Point Defiance Park is a reproduction of this second site. A treaty between the United States and Great Britain, signed in 1846, extended a border along the 49th parallel to the Pacific Ocean and left the HBC operating on foreign soil and contending with the influx of American settlers. By the late 1860s marginal profits no longer compensated for the mounting harassment from American revenue agents, tax collectors and settlers. In 1869, Fort Nisqually was closed. In the following years only the Factors House and the Granary avoided disrepair and decay that befell the rest of the structures. The fort was rebuilt in the 1930s on land owned by the Metropolitan Park District.

From the entrance through the Mens Dwelling House

Factors House, only building not in hewn log construction

In large store haranguing ladies that they need to ditch the man pants (jeans) and be outfitted in proper ladies attire for $3.20.

Store Goods, including the famous Hudson Bay wool blankets, with points.

Fur pelts taken in trade

Smithy

Back of Factors House, the bake oven, kitchen and wash house

Sparse sleeping quarters, easy to clean if have few belongings

Kitchen

Wash house

Factors dining room

It wouldnt be British without Punch and Judy There is also a zoo & aquarium in Point Defiance Park which we didnt visit. As to the Point Defiance name: Point Defiance Park began as a military reservation after the Wilkes Expedition visited Puget Sound in the 1840s to map the bays and estuaries. Wilkes is thought to have noted that with a fort positioned at the point, and at Gig Harbor across the narrows, one could "Defy" the world.[2] The high cliffs and prominent location were never used for military operations. As you can see Point Defiance Park is impossible to cover adequately in one visit. Thus, it is a source of ongoing pleasure for those who visit.