Puget Sound region and settled the Puget Sound area. The first non-indigenous settlement was New Market (now known as Tumwater) in 1846. In 1853 Washington Territory was formed from part of Oregon Territory. In 1888 the Northern Pacific railroad line reached Puget Sound, linking the region to eastern states. For a long period Tacoma was noted for its large smelters where gold, silver, copper and lead ores were treated. Seattle was the primary port for trade with Alaska and the rest of the country and for a time possessed a large shipbuilding industry. The region around eastern Puget Sound developed heavy industry during
Puget Sound faults geologic province is the approximately 50 million year (Ma) old marine basalts of the Crescent Formation, part of the Siletzia terrane that underlies western Washington and Oregon. East of Puget Sound the basement of the Cascades province is various pre-Tertiary (older than 65 Ma) metamorphic rock. Somewhere between Puget Sound and Cascades foothills these two geological provinces come into contact. As the juxtaposition of various disparate tectonic structures in northwest Washington requires significant strike-slip movement, it is further expected that this contact will be a major fault. The northern end of the Crescent Formation (aka Metchosin Formation) has been identified