 |
| |
Kalama has a unique and eclectic history. Originally settled by a Hawaiian, John Kalama, the town was one of the largest communities in Washington and Oregon Territories. Click here for more information on John Kalama. The community was established by the Northern Pacific Railway as the western terminus of the cross continental rail system.
The present day City of Kalama was born in 1870 when the Northern Pacific turned the first shovel of dirt. The town was officially named in 1871 by General John Sprague, an agent for the Northern Pacific Railway Company. Sprague adopted the same name as the Kalama River that runs through the area just to the north of town. See Northern Pacific Railroad for more information on the history of the railroad through Kalama.
John Kalama was born in Kula, Maui in 1811. To leave the islands of his native Hawaii and to find a new life along the Northwest Coast of America, John Kalama joined a fur-trading vessel returning to the Hudson's Bay Company. Foreign laborers recruited by Hudson's Bay included Brits and Scots, Iroquois Indians from Canada and Pacific Islanders. By 1846, Hawaiians made up half of the Hudson's Bay workforce. Kalama arrived in the Pacific Northwest around 1830.
John Kalama's trade took him to the Big Long Smoke House on Muck Creek near present-day Yelm. There he met and married Mary Martin, one of five daughters of Indian Martin, chief of the Nisqually tribe in southern Puget Sound.
1830 is the year given by some that Kalama was first settled by John Kalama. The Kalama River was named after John Kalama. At some point, he and his wife lived at the mouth of the river which now bears his name.
John and Mary had one son, Peter Kalama born in 1860. Mary died and Peter went to live with other members of the Nisqually tribe. Peter was about seven years old at the time. John Kalama married a second time and had a daughter, but there are no known records of this second child. Kalama died around 1870, just as the Northern Pacific Railroad teams arrived and the town was platted.
 Minnetonka Engine was first locomotive to operate on the rails in Kalama |
Near the present day location of the Kalama Marina, on March 19, 1871, the Northern Pacific Railroad began construction of the first mainline rails in the northwestern United States. Kalama was selected because NP engineers determined it was down-river from ice, the Columbia River channel depth was the same as at the river's bar at Astoria, and it was close to Portland and the Willamette Valley. The railroad would go northerly down the Columbia River, follow portions of the Cowlitz River, and then on northward toward the Olympia area. At that point in time, the Puget Sound terminus was undetermined. When Tacoma was finally selected as the NP's western terminus, final track alignments were determined near the Nisqually River and track work was completed into Tacoma on December 27, 1873. The first regularly scheduled trains between Kalama and Tacoma began January 5, 1874. The Northern Pacific Railroad staff overcame many serious challenges during this time, including a huge landslide near Pumphrey (eight miles north of Castle Rock, Washington) and serious financial problems just as the rail approached Tacoma. This western rail would ultimately connect with work started, at least in ceremony, on February 15, 1870 near Carlton, Minnesota, creating a transcontinental line across the northern portion of the United States. It would be hard to overstate the long-term economic, social, and even strategic importance of this Northern Pacific Railroad route… which started east in Kalama.
The Labor to Build the Northern Pacific
Two hundred and fifty men from Scotland, Ireland, Sweden and Germany joined 700 Chinese laborers when construction started in Kalama. Unskilled white workers were paid $2 per day; Chinese were paid $1 per day. Mechanics made $3 and gang foremen were paid $70 per month. The Chinese lived apart from white workers in a Chinatown - a section of Kalama known as China Garden. Little remains of the Chinese presence in Kalama, though the road that lead to this area still bears the name.
Back to HOME
Back to Demographics