Nalley: The Pickle King Behind the Namesake Tacoma Valley

Few South Sound residents know the name Marko Narancich. Butall know the food products and manufacturing district that bear hisAmericanized name. He is best known as Marcus Nalley, the founder of Nalley Fine Foods and its namesakeNalley Valley of Tacoma. He was the pickle, potato chip, and chili king of thePacific Northwest, a posthumous title he retains to this day since Nalleyproducts are found in every grocery store in the state.

Narancich immigrated to the United States in 1903 to followhis older brothers from their home country of Croatia to the land ofopportunity.

"I arrived in New York with 15 cents in my pocket. Icouldn't speak a word of English," hewould later say, long after changing his name to the easier-to-pronounce Marcus Nalley.

He rode the rails to Montana to work with his brothers inthe copper mining camps around Butte. He worked as a cook and finessed his wayto Chicago and then into a job aboard the Chicago, Milwaukee. St.Paul Railway's "Olympian" line between the Windy City and Tacoma,where he decided to set down roots.

He fell in love with the Tacoma and started working at one ofthe city's landmark hotels of the time, the BonnevilleHotel, which sat at 109 Tacoma Ave. beforebeing demolished in 1966. Nalley became a master chef and made a signaturedish, "SaratogaChips," a fried snack made from thinly sliced potatoes that werecreated by a chef in New York a half-century prior.

Nalley married his first wife, ElizabethCook, with a soncoming later that year. Nalley then started a side hustle in 1918 by makingthe chips in a rented expansion of his apartment after borrowing money to buyused potato slicers. He packed them himself and sold them to grocery stores anddoor-to-door. A secondson came along in 1923.

Nalley and his wife would later divorce. Both would remarry.He would marry FrancesMoore in 1935, while she would marry FabioMarcantelli in 1941.

He started adding other products at about the time some guynamed Herman Lay wouldmake his Saratoga chips under the name Lays Potato Chips, the first nationaldistributor of these saltedstarch marvels of the modern world.

Business boomed, so Nalley expanded with a facility at thecorner of Sprague and 6th Avenue, now a strip mall across fromHilltop Heritage Middle School, and another at the corner of Puyallup Avenueand D Street, which is now a chartered high school. The company expanded yet againright at the dawn of World War II. This time, the 22-acre complex would be aroundLawrence Street and South Tacoma Way, an area that rapidly became known as theNalley Valley since it was the largest employer in the area. The facilityallowed the company to add its now famous pickles to its offerings. Futureadditions would include peanut butter and stews to syrups and salad dressings.

Nalley was known for arriving at 4 a.m. daily to start workand supporting civil efforts and sports teams.

Nalley died in his sleep on October 25, 1962, right as the Cold War was getting hot with the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was 72.

"Ourcommunity has lost a great man and, if we are to memorialize him, let it be inthe love and affection we express for our city, our fellow men, and ourhomeland," the News Tribune wrote at the time. "Uncle Marc would wantit that way."

His company was sold to the W.R. Grace Co. in 1966. A paradeof new owners would follow as consolidations of food product manufacturerscreated giants and then mega companies. Nalley brand products were either movedto other locations or ceased altogether as the decades passed.

Potato chip making in the namesake valley stopped in themid-1990s. Nalley's peanut butter line ended in 1998 when that division wassold to Smucker's. Pickle making in Tacoma lasted until the turn of themillennium, and they are made elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Nalley'ssignature chili is now made in Iowa.

The Tacoma facility would ultimately shut down in 2011. Theitems using the Nalley Fine Foods bandare made today at facilities around the nation and are currently owned by Conagra Brands, the parentcompany of Birds Eyes, Duncan Hines, Slim Jim, Marie Callender's and a host ofothers.

The property itself has been largely silent ever since, butthose who have been around long enough still remember the signature smell ofpickle brining that once wafted through the valley.