[Editor note: The Pierce Prairie Post is including this event because Steve Anderson is an expert on the local history of the Hudson’s Bay Company who had Fort Nisqually and the Puget Sound Agricultural Company (PSAC) in our Pierce County area. Some of those PSAC farms were Spanueh (Spanaway), Sastuc (McChord Field), Mullock House (Elk Plain) and several along Muck Creek between Graham and Roy.]

University Place Historical Society — The next meeting of the University Place Historical Society will be on the first Wednesday in August, August 7th, at 7 pm. There will be a short business meeting followed by a presentation of local history by Steve Anderson, a 1973 Curtis High graduate.

Steve is the son of our esteemed members Ed and Lorraine Anderson. Steve is currently the Executive Director of the Carteret County Historical Museum in Moorhead, North Carolina. His talk is entitled Tales from Sahagalie Palielah: The Pre-pioneer History of University Place. A preview: “Blue bunch grass, now rarely seen in University Place, once covered the land – and burned every summer. The smoke from this and other fires in the open grasslands of early 19th century Pierce County clouded southern Puget Sound. Furthermore, the smoke was entered into early descriptions of the weather and landscape by some of our county’s first settlers.”

The presenter will address how a Native Hawaiian from that archipelago’s big island, a foul-mouthed English shipwright, and a Coast Salish Indian named Steilacoom constituted University Place’s first permanent residents.

The meeting will be held in Suite D-2, the room adjoining the UP Museum, Windmill Village Bldg D, suite D-3. This room can be entered either through the Museum or through the doors which open onto the Windmill Village Drexler St. Parking Lot. August meeting: August 7, 2013 at 7:00pm.