Olympia

City, capital of Washington, U.S., seat (1852) of Thurston county, on Budd Inlet and Capitol Lake (at the south end of Puget Sound), at the mouth of the Deschutes River, 29 miles (47 km) southwest of Tacoma. Laid out in 1851 as Smithfield, it became the site of a U.S. customs house and was renamed for the nearby Olympic Mountains. Chosen as the territorial capital in 1853, Olympia developed port facilities