I-5 — Olympia to Tumwater

Tumwater sits where the Deschutes River meets Budd Inlet, at the southern tip of Puget Sound, and it borders Olympia on the north [1]. No older permanent settlement of Anglo-American origin exists on Puget Sound [1]. Settlers first called it Newmarket and platted it under that name in 1845 [1]. The name they settled on comes from the Chinook Jargon word tumwata, a waterfall [1]. Before any of that, the Steh-Chass people lived at the falls and along the river for thousands of years, and that Lushootseed name covered the inlet, the river and the falls [1]. A post office took the name in 1863, and the town incorporated in 1869 [1]. Olympia, the capital, was declared the seat of the Washington Territory in 1853 and was its first and only capital as territory and state [2]. When I-5 came through, finished in 1958, it took a hundred buildings out of downtown Tumwater [1]. The historic district was listed in 1978 to hold onto what was left before the freeway was widened [1].