Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Mineral, WA

Mineral is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in northeastern Lewis County, sitting at the southern end of Mineral Lake near the Pierce County line, about four miles south of Elbe and 12 miles north of Morton, just east of State Route 7.

Mineral first appeared as a census-designated place in the 2010 census with 202 residents, and its population was 193 in the 2020 census; the CDP covers about 0.66 square miles at an elevation of about 1,473 feet.

The Mineral area was settled in the 1890s by homesteaders and coal and timber prospectors — the earliest known settler was the Fritz family in 1891 — and the town was founded by 1897 on the shore of Mineral Lake, named for the lake and the region's veins of ruby arsenic; it was also called Mineral City and Mineral Creek in its early years.

An 1892 false silver find on Mineral Creek sparked a short-lived silver rush, but the mining colonies were abandoned after a flood in 1902, and arsenic mines opened in their place before that market too disappeared within about five years.

The Tacoma Eastern Railroad completed a passenger and freight line to Mineral in 1905, and the Mineral Logging Company sawmill, built in 1907, employed about 200 people and used Mineral Lake as a log holding pond.

By the 1920s Mineral's population peaked at roughly 1,000, with three general stores, two hotels, a movie house showing three films a week, and an automobile agency, and its timber workforce included Scandinavian and Japanese laborer communities.

Mineral declined after a destructive coal mine fire in 1920 and a 1922 fire that destroyed its largest mill, which was never rebuilt, although a shingle mill operated into the mid-1970s.

The Mineral Log Lodge, built in 1906, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, and the original Mineral Post Office, built in 1898, is a 64-square-foot structure once considered the smallest post office in the United States.

Tourism is now Mineral's main industry, centered on recreational fishing in Mineral Lake, which is stocked with rainbow trout and promoted with the slogan "Mineral Lake, home of the 10 pound trout"; the community can exceed 3,000 people on the opening weekend of fishing season, and it hosts the annual Mineral Lake Fishing Derby.

The Mt. Rainier Scenic Railroad heritage railway runs from Elbe to Mineral and ends at the Mt. Rainier Railroad and Logging Museum in Mineral, and the community affords views of Mount Rainier.