South Sound
The history of South Puget Sound is a lot like the history of North Puget Sound, only farther south.
The Bearded One tells me to go lightly about the prehistoric and glacial effects on this area, the crossing of the land bridge from Siberia to Alaska by some early people and other historical facts and scientific guesswork listed in the North Sound section. (If you are interested in the glacier thing, I covered them in the Seattle section.)
For the purpose of this section of our web-site, South Puget Sound begins at the southern boundary of the City of Seattle and continues south to Tumwater just past Olympia and east to the foothills of the Cascades.
As in the rest of the Puget Sound, before the arrival of European settlers, there were many Native American communities along the shores and river drainage areas. The native people knew this area as home for thousands of years. Much of their cultural history is only now being rediscovered and reintroduced to their people and the rest of us, interested in learning how it was before the disruption of newcomers with an ever-growing need for land ownership.
Among the first United States settlers in the Puget Sound area was a group of five families from Missouri. This group included George Washington Bush, a former slave (and later Washington cattle rancher), and his friend Michael Troutman Simmons, a grist mill owner.
In late 1845, this small group arrived on the southern tip of Puget Sound where the Deschutes River enters the Sound. This was just the little piece of heaven the group had been searching for. Waterfalls there could provide power for the grist and lumber mills Bush and Simmons planned to build. They promptly named the spot Bush Prairie. Soon after, the name was changed to New Town. On November 12, 1875, the settlement was incorporated as Tumwater, taken from the Chinook jargon phrase “tumtum chuck” which means, “waterfalls” or “rapids” or “heartbeat water.”
Due to the excellent water quality, the Olympic Brewing Company began brewing beer at a facility along the Deschutes River near Tumwater in 1896 and continued to do so until 2003 – with only a time out for Prohibition.
The towns of Olympia and Tacoma were soon to follow as the South Sound began to attract more and more settlers.
(Whew! It is time for a cold one. Too bad it’s not an Oly.)
Belva & The Bearded One
