Here provide documents for neighborhoods where racial restrictive covenants were imposed in the decades when they were legal. Most restrictions in Pierce County date from 1922 to 1957 and covered a large percentage of subdivisions developed in that period. We have documented more than 4,500 restricted properties in 87 subdivisions. Do not assume that areas without circles were unrestricted. Neighborhoods without covenants often practiced racial exclusion by other means. In 1940, Pierce's population of 182,081 included only 935 Black people and 2,839 other non-whites (mostly members of the Puyallup and Nisqually tribes). As the population soared to 411,027 by 1970, the number of non-white residents grew substantially in large part because of military installations. The 1970 census counted 18,501 Black residents, a third of them military personel at Fort Lewis. Asian and Latino people numbered 5,373, a quarter of them stationed at the military base. The census counted 3,343 Puyallup people and other Indigenous Americans in 1970 but the tribe had lost control of reservation lands. Overall, the county population remained 93% white.

Scroll below map to find documents. Everything here is preliminary and may change. For a searchable map of individual properties go to our Pierce parcels map