Olympia

Sister cities

• Katō-shi

History

For thousands of years, the site of Olympia has been home to the Lushootseed-speaking people known as the Stechass (), who are today part of the Squaxin Island Tribe. Other Native Americans regularly visited the head of Budd Inlet, including the other ancestral tribes of the Squaxin, as well as the Nisqually, Puyallup, Chehalis, Suquamish, and Duwamish. The peninsula on which Olympia was built was named , meaning 'black bear place,' and a Stechass village was located at the site of Olympia. The modern city of Olympia has come to be called in the Lushootseed language; originally the name referred to all Budd Inlet. because of its view of the Olympic Mountains to the northwest. The area began to be served by a small fleet of steamboats known as the Puget Sound Mosquito Fleet. It was declared the capital of the Washington Territories by Governor Isaac I. Stevens in November 1853. Olympia was the first and only capital of Washington in its history as both a territory and a state. Over two days, December 24–26, 1854, Governor Stevens negotiated the Treaty of Medicine Creek with the representatives of the Nisqually, Puyallup, Squawksin, Stechass, Noo-Seh-Chatl, Squi-Aitl, T'Peeksin, Sahewamish, and S'Hotl-Ma-Mish tribes. Stevens's treaty included the preservation of Indigenous fishing, hunting, gathering and other rights. It also included a section which, at least as interpreted by United States officials, required the Native American signatories to move to one of three reservations. Doing so would effectively force the Nisqually people to cede their prime farming and living space. An additional agreement between the state, city, and indigenous groups, known as the Treaty of Olympia or as the Quinault Treaty, was completed during 1855. One of the leaders of the Nisqually,…

Geography

Olympia is located in Thurston County at the southern end of Puget Sound on Budd Inlet, where the Deschutes River estuary enters the Sound. The river was dammed in 1951 to create Capitol Lake; in late 2022 the state government approved the dam's removal to restore the estuary at an unspecified date. The city is southwest of Seattle, the most populous city in Washington, and north of Portland, Oregon. The cities of Lacey and Tumwater border Olympia. , Olympia had an area of , of which was land and was water. The area is located near the southern limit of the Fraser Glaciation and the underlying sediments consist largely of Vashon-age till and outwash deposited at that time; the area also includes former lakebeds and alluvial deposits associated with proglacial lakes that existed in the area near the end of Vashon-stage glaciation. Residual glacial topography in the area includes drumlins, subglacial channels, and kettle lakes. Much of downtown Olympia sits on reclaimed land. Tidewater areas were filled as early as the 1870s, but the major change occurred in 1910–11 with placement of the Carlyon Fill (named for mayor Phillip H. Carlyon). Over of sediment were dredged, thereby creating a deep-water port at Olympia; the dredged material was used to fill tidelands, creating almost 30 blocks of what is now downtown. Olympia has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen: Csb). The local microclimate has dry summers in July and mildly humid summers in early June and late August, with cool July and August overnight lows. It is part of USDA Hardiness zone 8a, with isolated pockets around Puget Sound in zone 8b. Most of western Washington's weather is brought in by weather systems that form near the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. It contains cold moist air, which brings…

Race & ethnicity

Most-observed species

• Song Sparrow

  Melospiza melodia (A.Wilson, 1810) · Aves
  30,818
• American Robin

  Turdus migratorius Linnaeus, 1766 · Aves
  27,362
• American Crow

  Corvus brachyrhynchos C.L.Brehm, 1822 · Aves
  26,606
• Black-capped Chickadee

  Poecile atricapillus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  25,432
• Spotted Towhee

  Pipilo maculatus Swainson, 1827 · Aves
  23,573
• Mallard

  Anas platyrhynchos Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  22,825
• Northern Flicker

  Colaptes auratus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  19,073
• Dark-eyed Junco

  Junco hyemalis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  18,977

Largest nearby schools

• Olympia High School
  High · OLYMPIA · 1,838 students · 22.7:1 ratio
• River Ridge High School
  High · Lacey · 1,476 students · 19.2:1 ratio
• North Thurston High School
  High · Lacey · 1,440 students · 20.3:1 ratio
• Timberline High School
  High · Lacey · 1,404 students · 21.6:1 ratio
• Capital High School
  High · OLYMPIA · 1,326 students · 21.7:1 ratio
• Tumwater High School
  High · Tumwater · 1,111 students · 22.7:1 ratio
• Washington Connections Academy - Mary M. Knight
  Elementary · Tumwater · 862 students · 24.6:1 ratio
• A G West Black Hills High School
  High · Tumwater · 833 students · 24.5:1 ratio

Most recent

• M 2.64 — 2026-10-15
  5 km SW of Wilderness Rim, Washington
• M 2.65 — 2026-10-14
  5 km WSW of Wilderness Rim, Washington
• M 4.15 — 2026-09-29
  6 km WNW of Wauna, Washington
• M 3.75 — 2026-09-05
  20 km E of Castle Rock, Washington
• M 2.84 — 2026-05-27
  4 km W of Wauna, Washington
• M 2.52 — 2026-03-17
  7 km SE of Mineral, Washington