It tends to be true that after visiting Seattle, travelers head west to the Olympic Peninsula, north to the San Juan Islands, or east to the Cascade Mountains. They rarely go south. This is unfortunate because they miss an opportunity to experience one of Washington state’s less-explored treasures—Tacoma.
Judging by the nickname of the region’s airport, Sea-Tac, you would think that Seattle and Tacoma are sister cities. If so, Tacoma has long been the less-loved stepsister, the one with the bad-girl reputation. The olfactory atmosphere from its pulp mill was even dubbed the “Tacoma-aroma.” During the worst days of the late 1970s, the city’s own mayor, Harold Moss, described the abandoned downtown district as looking “as bombed out as Beirut.”
