Biohazard Cleanup Near Delridge Olympia, WA

Olympia is the capital city of Washington and the county seat of Thurston County, anchoring the South Puget Sound region about 50 miles southwest of Seattle.

The city sits on Budd Inlet and Capitol Lake at the southern end of Puget Sound, at the mouth of the Deschutes River.

Olympia was laid out in 1851 as Smithfield and was renamed for the view of the nearby Olympic Mountains.

Olympia was declared the capital of the Washington Territory in 1853 and was incorporated as a town on January 28, 1859, later becoming a city in 1882.

The Squaxin and other Coast Salish peoples inhabited the southern Puget Sound region long before American settlement, and the Treaty of Medicine Creek (1854) and the Treaty of Olympia (1856) reshaped the region.

The Washington State Capitol's Legislative Building, home to the state legislature and the governor's office, was completed in 1928.

The 2020 census counted 55,605 people in Olympia, up from 46,478 in 2010, with about 24,393 households recorded in 2020.

The Evergreen State College, a public liberal arts college northwest of the city, and South Puget Sound Community College are Olympia's main institutions of higher learning.

Olympia is home to the Olympia Farmers Market, one of the city's best-known gathering places near the downtown waterfront.

Residents of Olympia are called Olympians, and the city's wider metropolitan area is home to an estimated 300,000 people.