Blood & Biohazard Cleanup Near Cherry Meadows Yelm, WA

Yelm is a city in southeastern Thurston County, bordering Pierce County along the Nisqually River, and its nickname is "Pride of the Prairie."

The name Yelm is said to come from the Coast Salish word shelm or chelm, meaning "heat waves from the sun," a reference to heat mirages shimmering over the prairie.

Yelm Prairie was originally inhabited by the Nisqually people, who used it as pasture for their horses, and the first permanent non-Indigenous settlers arrived in 1853 to join Hudson's Bay Company sheep farmers already in the area.

The Northern Pacific Railway reached Yelm in 1873, and the Yelm Ditch irrigation project of 1916 turned the city into a commercial center for beans, cucumbers, and berries.

Yelm was incorporated on December 8, 1924, and on December 13, 1989, the fourth-class Town of Yelm was reorganized as the non-charter code City of Yelm.

Yelm's population was 10,617 at the 2020 census, a 55 percent jump from 6,848 in 2010, continuing growth that made it one of Washington's fastest-growing cities at the start of the 21st century.

The 2020 census counted 3,356 households in Yelm, more than half of them with children under 18, and the median age was just 29.9 years.

Yelm functions largely as a bedroom community for Tacoma, Olympia, and Centralia and hosts many military families from nearby Joint Base Lewis-McChord, which lies across the Nisqually River, with the Nisqually Indian Reservation to the northwest.

Yelm City Park, donated by Chuck and Wilma Demich in 1950, hosts Prairie Days, Christmas in the Park, and the Yelm Lions Easter Egg Hunt, while the 8-acre Cochrane Park wetland includes a catch-and-release pond for rainbow trout.

Yelm is the eastern terminus of the Yelm-Rainier-Tenino Trail, and the city operates the first Class A water reclamation facility in Washington, reclaiming all of its wastewater for local irrigation and stream recharge.