In the 1850s, Steilacoom was one of a few waterfront settlements along Puget Sound in the Northwest, the last American frontier between the Civil War and the Klondike Gold Rush many decades later. The area attracted men and women who dreamed of a better life among the hardships of pioneer ways and the shadow of the Oregon Trail.

Steilacoom's boosters hoped very much that their town would become the next San Francisco. They wanted Steilacoom to bustle with business and trade. And Steilacoom did bustle early in that decade, back when Tacoma did not exist and Seattle was a gleam in its founders' eyes.

-The first incorporated community in Washington Territory .

-The first brick building north of the Columbia River (which was also the first jail in Pierce County) .

-The first Protestant church building.

-The first school in Pierce County.

-The first official U.S. presence in Washington Territory (Fort Steilacoom, now located within the boundaries of Lakewood). 

-The first public lending library in Washington Territory.