Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Roy Roy, WA

Roy is a small rural city in southern Pierce County, surrounded by farms, ranches, and pastureland just south of the lands of Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

Roy was founded in 1884 as a stop on the Northern Pacific Railroad and was officially incorporated as a city on January 16, 1908.

In its boom years Roy was a prosperous market and lumber town whose sawmills supplied lumber for Tacoma and whose surrounding prairie farms formed a prime hop-growing region.

Three blows shrank the once-thriving town: a major fire in 1929 wiped out most of downtown just before the Depression, the railroad eventually dropped Roy as a main stop, and the U.S. Army annexed most of the surrounding land to the north and west, limiting the city's expansion and tax base and erasing the nearby community of Loveland.

The iconic Roy Water Tower, which supplied water to steam trains in the early 20th century, remains the city's best-known landmark.

The 2020 census counted 816 residents in 292 households within Roy's roughly half square mile, up modestly from 793 people in 303 households in 2010.

The Roy Pioneer Rodeo is the city's signature event, attracting participants and spectators from several states and Canada.

Despite its name, the busy "Roy Y" — the intersection of State Routes 7 and 507 — is not in Roy at all; it lies about seven miles northeast in Spanaway.

Farming and cattle raising remain mainstays of Roy's economy, and Wilcox Farms and the Silvaseed Company are two of the area's important employers.

Roy Elementary School, part of the Bethel School District, serves the city's youngest students in grades pre-kindergarten through 5.