Centralia () is a city in Lewis County, Washington, United States. It is located along Interstate 5 near the midpoint between Seattle and Portland, Oregon. The city had a population of 18,183 at the 2020 census. Centralia is twinned with Chehalis, located to the south near the confluence of the Chehalis and Newaukum rivers.
History
Skookumchuck
The area was first settled by the Upper Chehalis people, who had several villages at the confluence of the Skookumchuck and Chehalis rivers. In 1850, J. G. Cochran and his wife Anna were led there via the Oregon Trail by their adopted son, George Washington, a free African-American. The family feared Washington would be forced into slavery if they stayed in Missouri after the passage of the Compromise of 1850. Cochran filed a donation land claim near the Borst Home in 1852 and was able to sell his claim to Washington for $6,000 because unlike the neighboring Oregon Territory, there was no restriction against passing legal ownership of land to African Americans in the newly formed Washington Territory.
The town was originally called Skookumchuck after the nearby river, itself named for a Chinook Jargon word meaning "rapids." As it grew, local Upper Chehalis people continued to live there each summer for the harvest, and some took jobs in town. However, their community was devastated by a smallpox epidemic in 1852, and after they abandoned a nearby village, settlers burned it down. Skookumchuck settlers then built and moved into Fort Henness near the site, worried that the Upper Chehalis would attack them during the Puget Sound War. A few settlers remained in town, with one writing that he saw the fort as "injurious to our friendship". The Upper Chehalis did not fight in the war and remained connected to Skookumchuck. Although the Upper Chehalis had not signed the Treaty of Point Elliott due to concerns over the reservation terms, some moved to the Chehalis Reservation when it was created in 1864. Responding to new settlers' concern about a town in Klickitat County with the same name, the town was renamed Centralia by 1883, as suggested by a recent settler from Centralia, Illinois, and officially incorporated on February 3, 1886.
thumb|Centralia Hotel seen in a postcard view from June 17, 1913|left
A large fire on June 26, 1908, part of a string of arson attempts spanning between the Twin Cities that month, decimated a block in the city's downtown district. The early morning blaze, which began at the Star Saloon, caused the loss of twelve buildings but only one person was reported injured.
On November 11, 1919, the Centralia Massacre occurred. Spurred on by local lumber barons, American Legionnaires (many of whom had returned from WWI to find their jobs filled by pro-union members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)), used the Armistice Day parade to attack the IWW hall. Marching unarmed, the Legionnaires broke from the parade and stormed the hall in an effort to bust union organizing efforts by what was seen to be a Bolshevik-inspired labor movement. IWW workers including recently returned WWI veteran Wesley Everest, stood their ground, engaged and killed four Legionnaires. Everest was captured, jailed and then brutally lynched. Other IWW members were also jailed. The event made international headlines, and coupled with similar actions in Everett, Washington and other lumber towns, stifled the American labor movement until the economic devastation of the 1930s Great Depression changed opinions about labor organizations.
During the Great Depression, Centralia's lumber industry contracted, and many sawmills shut down. However, lumber and mining remained Centralia's main industries over the next decades, and Centralia had Washington state's largest open-pit mine during the 1960s. In the 1980s, Centralia's downtown revitalized as a historic retail core. Centralia's TransAlta mine, the last coal mine in the state, closed in 2006.
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which, is land and is water.
thumb|View from [[Expedition 72, October 2024]]
Landforms
Located off Interstate 5 is Plummer Lake, a small body of water caused by the excavation of glacial rock for gravel purposes beginning in 1910. The lake is named after Sydney Plummer, owner of the quarry and excavating company at the time. , Plummer Lake is privately owned.
Climate
This region experiences warm (but not hot) and dry summers, with no average monthly temperatures above 71.6 °F. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Centralia has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate, abbreviated "Csb" on climate maps. Temperatures are usually quite mild, although Centralia is generally warmer in the summer and colder in the winter than locations further north along the Puget Sound.