Folks keep telling me that Tacoma Park is in Maryland, but that just tells me they haven’t spent much time studying North Carolina history. As Tacoma Park’s founders, John Harrison and Ben Felton, will tell you, Tacoma Park has always been in North Carolina. Don’t bother checking road atlases, Google Maps, or the Wayback Machine to argue otherwise. Anyone with a good eye and this accompanying map can plainly see the roots of Tacoma Park run back quite a ways.
Now, the story of Tacoma Park, North Carolina may not be as widely told as some of the state’s better-known tales, like the ballad of Tom Dooley or the strange flickering glow of the Brown Mountain Lights, but I can assure you it’s no less intriguing.
Chances are you’ve heard stories of the Bermuda Triangle. But unless you’re well acquainted with the geography around Raleigh and Durham, you might not know about another triangle entirely. The locals simply call it The Triangle. It’s formed by those two cities and their neighbor Chapel Hill, and if you draw the lines just right you’ll see a three-pointed figure sitting there, mysterious as can be.
And folks, that might just be the heart of the Tacoma Park mystery.
I’ve been told, by sources who insist on remaining anonymous, that back in the 1860s the centroid of that very triangle sat squarely on Tacoma Park itself. Now I’ll admit that from where I’m sitting today, here on the Central Coast of California, I can’t swear on my copy of The Acid Archives (or the Veganomicon, for that matter) that Tacoma Park truly sat where those three median lines meet. But I will say this: it makes a powerful kind of sense.
Because if such a point did exist… and if Tacoma Park sat right atop it… you’d have the makings of a proper vortex, the sort where earthly geography and celestial mischief cross paths. And if something like that ever occurred, well… it’s not hard to imagine a phenomenon sweeping through and wiping the physical trace of a town clean off the map.
How else could anyone explain that sudden drop in population somewhere between 1867 and 1870?
Of course, naysayers are going to naysay. They always do. Some of them even point to the title of the newest Tacoma Park album, ahem, Baltimore, as if that settles the matter. But a title is just a title, and a coincidence is just a coincidence.
No offense to the good folks of Maryland. It’s a fine place. I’ve even been there to see Jon Camp. But the proud Tar Heels of North Carolina aren’t about to let their history wander across state lines.
Tacoma Park is in North Carolina.
And it most certainly ain’t in Maryland.