Welcome to Kalama.info
John Kalama was born in Kula,
Maui in 1811. To leave the islands of his native Hawaii and to find a new life along the Northwest Coast of America, John Kalama joined a
fur-trading vessel returning to the
Hudson’s Bay Company. Foreign laborers
recruited by Hudson’s Bay included Brits and Scots, Iroquois Indians from Canada and Pacific Islanders. By 1846, Hawaiians made up half of the Hudson’s Bay workforce. Kalama
arrived in the Pacific Northwest around 1830.
John Kalama’s trade took him to the Big Long Smoke House on
Muck Creek near present-day Yelm. There
he met and married Mary Martin, one of five daughters of Indian Martin, chief
of the Nisqually tribe in southern
Puget Sound.
1830 is the year given by some that Kalama was first settled by
John Kalama. The Kalama River was named
after John Kalama. At some point, he
and his wife lived at the mouth of the river which now bears his name.
John and Mary had one son, Peter Kalama born in 1860. Mary died
and Peter went to live with other members
of the Nisqually tribe. The Peter was
about seven years old at the time. John
Kalama married a second time and had a
daughter, but there are no known records of this second child. Kalama
died around 1870, just as the Northern Pacific Railroad teams arrived and the
town was platted.
The present day City of Kalama was born in 1870 when the
Northern Pacific turned the first shovel of
dirt. The town was officially named in 1871 by General John Sprague, an agent
for the Northern Pacific Railway Company. Sprague adopted the same name as the Kalama
River that runs through the
area just to the north of town.
John Kalama