Steilacoom

History

The Steilacoom people, a Coast Salish tribe, lived in what became the city of Steilacoom. Their main village was called Scht’ləqʷəm, later anglicized as Steilacoom. William Bright says the name comes from the Southern Coast Salish subgroup /č'tílqʷəbš/, anglicized as "Steilacoom". The United States Army established Fort Steilacoom in August 1849 following attacks on Fort Nisqually. European-American settlement at Steilacoom began with Lafayette Balch, a sea captain from Maine who arrived in 1851. The following year, Balch opened a sawmill to process and export lumber to San Francisco and named the settlement "Port Steilacoom". An adjacent settlement, Steilacoom City, was founded in June 1851 by John B. Chapman. The two settlements were merged into Steilacoom, which was named the county seat of Pierce County on December 12, 1852, and incorporated on April 22, 1854. Steilacoom was the first town in Washington Territory to be incorporated. Steilacoom had the first jail in Washington and the first sawmill. It has four individual buildings and sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including the oldest Catholic Church in the state, the first Protestant Church north of the Columbia River, as well as the Steilacoom Historic District, with 68 contributing properties. The town remained prominent in the region until the construction of the Northern Pacific Railway, which opened in 1873 with a terminus in Tacoma. The county seat was moved from Steilacoom to Tacoma in 1880; an interurban streetcar was built in 1891 to connect the two cities. Fort Steilacoom was redeveloped into Western State Hospital, a state-run mental health facility that now lies in the adjacent and larger city of Lakewood.

Geography

Steilacoom is situated on Puget Sound between the Nisqually River delta and the Tacoma Narrows. It sits across from Anderson and Ketron islands to the west and McNeil Island to the northwest. The city is bordered to the south by Joint Base Lewis–McChord, a major military installation, and to the north by Chambers Bay, a public golf course. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which, is land and is water.

Race & ethnicity

Largest nearby schools

• Spanaway Lake High School
  High · Spanaway · 1,817 students · 23.9:1 ratio
• Lincoln High School
  High · Tacoma · 1,578 students · 19:1 ratio
• Stadium High School
  High · Tacoma · 1,571 students · 23.4:1 ratio
• Mount Tahoma High School
  High · Tacoma · 1,430 students · 20.4:1 ratio
• Curtis Senior High
  High · UNIVERSITY PLACE · 1,349 students · 23.3:1 ratio
• Clover Park High School
  High · Lakewood · 1,315 students · 18.8:1 ratio
• Lakes High School
  High · Lakewood · 1,286 students · 21.4:1 ratio
• Franklin Pierce High School
  High · TACOMA · 1,141 students · 17.8:1 ratio