A tale of two neighbors: It all started in 1890
Erin Pearson and Sarah Biggerstaff

When Bjug Harstad arrived in Parkland in 1890 with the intention of founding a Lutheran school he was in an expanding frontier town.

Only a handful of families lived in the area, usually quite a distance from one another. Their homes and farms had no electricity and they traveled primarily by horse and buggy.

Pacific Avenue was a dirt wagon trail and, even though a thoroughfare to Tacoma, was so muddy in the winter that it was impossible to traverse.

Harstad chose Parkland as the site for the new college partly because of the natural, frontier setting and also because it was on a railway line. This solved the problem of getting people to the school. Harstad, along with Peter Langseth, Ole Storaasli, Carl Hordness and Louis Evenson formed the Pacific Lutheran University Associates in December 1890. The group’s first task was to orchestrate the purchase of land with Parkland real estate agent Ward Smith.

Smith owned a great deal of land in Parkland. He made an agreement with the PLU Associates that he would give them a percentage of the profits from the sale of his land as an incentive to build their school in Parkland.

PLU would bring new residents to the area. The new residents would buy land from Smith to build their homes, and the PLU Associates would receive a percentage of the profits from those sales.

The place and time were ripe for change, and the construction and opening of Pacific Lutheran University played a significant role in transforming Parkland from frontier village to suburban area.

After 1888, many Scandinavians migrated west. Norwegian newspapers advertised indications of Tacoma's bright future in the Northwest, such as the advantages of the Northern Pacific Railroad, large stretches of free or cheap land, and natural resources.

PLU drew new residents to Parkland. Reverend N. Christensen from Missouri was a friend of Harstad’s. Christensen came to teach at the new school. The Sinland family also moved in and Samuel Sinland worked as a carpenter at PLU and built houses in the area. Martin Glasso and his family moved to Parkland in 1891, and built the first house on Garfield Street. Glasso also worked as a stonemason on the Old Main building.

The A.R. Watson general store opened up on Garfield Street and was the first commercial establishment there. By 1893 a second general merchandise store, a post office, a bakery, and a butcher shop were open for business. A feed and merchandise store, a slaughterhouse, and a horseshoeing and wagon making shop were located on the dirt road known as Pacific Avenue.

PLU was in debt before the first students walked through the door. A mortgage hung over the school from the beginning, and the Association took out loans to cover building costs. Workers were not paid in full for their services on the construction of the school. The panic and economic crash of 1893 meant that money was short and real estate values were low.

The low real estate values meant that the tens of thousands of dollars in profit that the Aassociation was expecting from the sale of Smith’s lots in Parkland didn't materialize. These financial difficulties factored into the decision to close the school from 1918 to 1920.

The school was a recreational and social center for Parkland in the late 1890s and early 1900s. It offered picnics, basketball games and piano sings.

Garfield Street was the city center of Parkland. The grocery stores in town bartered with farmers—exchanging products for eggs and milk from the farm. People went to Garfield Street to stock up on necessities as well as gossip and share information.

In the 1930s, the Great Depression hit the United States. By 1929, the school was $64,469 in debt. In 1930, millions of Americans were unemployed and stock values were only a fraction of what they were the previous year. PLU struggled to stay afloat during the Depression. Grants and fundraising helped, as did the generosity of the Dahl family. The Dahls owned a grocery store in Parkland, and Malla Dahl extended credit to faculty members and their families.

In 1945, Parkland bounced back from depression and development began as soldiers returned from World War II. New businesses, many in the area of service, like hair salons and television repair stores, were built to accommodate the sudden population growth as military men settled in and started families.

In 1940, there were 500 students enrolled at PLU. Nearly 20 years later, PLU had its largest enrollment up until that point — 2,177 students, four times the size in 1940. Students came to PLU from 28 different states and nine foreign countries. As a result of such a large population growth, 11 buildings were constructed on the PLU campus between 1963 and 1971.

Parkland’s business community enjoyed abundant business and service opportunities in the late 1940s and the early and middle 1950s, but a gradual decline began in the late 1950s. The nature of customers changed; they did not know the merchants personally, and so, felt no responsibility to shop in local businesses. New Parkland residents now outnumbered old ones and the population of the area could not support the great number of local businesses.

A majority of Parkland residents were military personnel, and they could buy goods for much less at the commissaries of McChord and Ft. Lewis.

Today, military personnel hold many leadership roles in Pierce County. Jim Heishman of the Pierce County Sheriff's Department is an active duty Air Force Reservist who has been serving at McChord since the September 11th attacks. Gerald Horne, the Prosecuting Attorney for Pierce County is an Air Force Reserve lieutenant colonel at McChord AFB.

So what’s next for Parkland? It could annex itself to Tacoma, or it could retain its identity under incorporation. Instead, Parkland has remained a rural district. Whatever happens one thing is clear, Pacific Lutheran University is the center of and will continue to influence the Parkland community.

 

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