Tacoma is the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States.
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Tacoma is the second-largest city in the Puget Sound area and the third-largest in the state.
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Tacoma serves as the center of business activity for the South Sound region, which has a population of about 1 million.
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Tacoma adopted its name after the nearby Mount Rainier, originally and locally called Takhoma or Tahoma.
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The city gained notoriety in 1940 for the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which earned the nickname "Galloping Gertie".
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Carr hoped to profit from the selection of Commencement Bay as the terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad, and sold most of his claim to developer Morton M McCarver, who named his project Tacoma City, derived from the indigenous name for the mountain.
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Tacoma was briefly a major destination for big-time automobile racing, with one of the nation's top-rated racing venues just outside the city limits, at the site of today's Clover Park Technical College.
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In one of the coldest winters on record, Tacoma experienced mass power outages and eventually the shutdown of major power supply dams, leaving the city without sufficient power and heat.
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Tacoma's Hooverville grew in 1924 as the homeless community settled on the waterfront.
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Tacoma was featured prominently in the garage rock sound of the mid-1960s with bands including The Wailers and The Sonics.
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Downtown Tacoma experienced a long decline through the mid-20th century.
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In 1998, Tacoma installed a high-speed fiber optic network throughout the community.
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Tacoma's succeeded Marilyn Strickland, who was elected in 2009, becoming Tacoma's first African-American female mayor.
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Tacoma is the home of several international companies, including staffing company True Blue Inc, lumber company Simpson, and the food companies Roman Meal and Brown and Haley.
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Hospitals in Tacoma are operated by MultiCare Health System and Franciscan Health System.
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Parks and recreation services in and around Tacoma are governed by Metro Parks Tacoma, a municipal corporation established as a separate entity from the city government in 1907.
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Jefferson Park in North Tacoma is the location of a new sprayground, an area designed to be a safe and unique play area where water is sprayed from structures or ground sprays and then drained away before it can accumulate.
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Tacoma includes several landmarks and was home to prolific architects, including Everett Phipps Babcock, Frederick Heath, Ambrose J Russell, and Silas E Nelsen.
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The Tacoma Narrows Bridges link Tacoma to Gig Harbor and the Kitsap Peninsula.
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The failure of the first Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which was the third-longest suspension bridge in the world, is a famous case study in architecture textbooks.
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Tacoma has many properties that are listed on the City of Tacoma Register of Historic Places, the Washington State Heritage Register, and the National Register of Historic Places.
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Tacoma is home to three charter public schools: SOAR Academy, Green Dot Destiny and Summit Olympus school.
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Tacoma School of the Arts, opened in 2001 in downtown Tacoma, is an arts-focused high school that serves as a national model for educational innovation.
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SOTA is in multiple venues around Downtown Tacoma and uses Community Museums and Universities for instructional space.
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SAMI and SOTA are the only schools in Tacoma to offer University of Washington in the Classroom college credit options from the University of Washington.
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Tacoma is the setting for the American comedy television series Tacoma FD on truTV.
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At one point, the Tacoma Dome was home to a professional indoor soccer team, the Tacoma Stars.
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Tacoma is home to the all-female flat track roller derby league Dockyard Derby Dames, which fields an away team.
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Tacoma does have some major roads which do not seem to follow any naming rules.
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Public transportation in Tacoma includes buses, commuter rail, light rail, and ferries.
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