Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Fords Prairie, WA

Fords Prairie is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Lewis County, Washington, using Centralia's ZIP code 98531.

The Upper Chehalis (Quiyaisk) tribe called the area Tasunshun, meaning "resting place," and kept a permanent winter village there.

Fords Prairie was named for Judge Sidney S. Ford Sr. and his wife Nancy, among the earliest white pioneers north of the Columbia River, who settled there in 1846 on a 640-acre Donation Land Claim abutting the Chehalis River.

The Ford claim became an important travel stop between the Columbia River and Puget Sound, the Ford home served as a courthouse with county and territorial meetings documented from October 4, 1847, and territorial governor Isaac Stevens stayed there in December 1854.

During the Puget Sound War of 1855, more than 200 local residents sheltered for 16 months at Fort Henness in nearby Grand Mound.

Centralia has annexed parts of Fords Prairie since 1946, and a proposal to incorporate Fords Prairie failed in May 1982 with 85% of voters against it.

Fords Prairie is often considered a neighborhood of Centralia, which borders it to the south, with Grand Mound to the north, Interstate 5 forming its eastern edge at Exit 82 (Harrison Avenue), and the Chehalis River along its west side.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the CDP covers 3.9 square miles, of which 3.7 square miles are land and 0.1 square miles are water.

The population was 2,234 at the 2020 census, up from 1,959 in 2010, and in 2000 there were 1,961 people living in 785 households; the 1980 census counted 2,582 people.

Centralia High School is located within Fords Prairie, whose first school was the Lum Schoolhouse; by 1906 its school district was the largest rural school district in Lewis County before it merged into Centralia's district in 1944.