I-5 — Tumwater to Maytown

Interstate 5 runs south through Tumwater, past the Olympia Regional Airport and a few state office parks. Two interchanges with SR 121 follow, both serving Millersylvania State Park. Among Anglo-American towns on Puget Sound, Tumwater is the oldest one built to last. Settlers first platted it as Newmarket, and its name comes from the Chinook Jargon word for waterfall. The freeway was completed in 1958, and building it meant tearing down 100 buildings downtown. Four identical concrete totem poles stand on the Carlyon Bridge, added in 1937 as part of a Capitol Boulevard project. Maytown, east of Littlerock off I-5, began as a lumber town in 1911, named for Maytown, Kentucky. Folklore tells it otherwise, with a settler shrugging that the place might become a town or might not. [1]