In 1873, the Northern Pacific Railroad chose Commencement Bay as the western terminus for the Transcontinental line. With this, and the state of Washington achieving statehood in 1889, Tacoma really started to take off. The town grew from 1,098 in 1880 to 36,000 in 1890. This expanded other modes of transportation throughout the city such as streetcar lines and roads connecting to the depot. Immigrants poured into the town. The biggest main sources of commerce came from dealings in lumber, wheat, and coal; the area became the biggest terminus in the northwest. Rudyard Kipling visited the town in 1889; he described the populated town of Tacoma as “literally staggering under a boom of the boomiest.”