Tenino () is a city in Thurston County, Washington, United States. The population was 1,870 at the 2020 census.
Incorporated in 1906, the city sits upon land first established as a food-source prairie for Native Americans living in the area. The town grew around an economy of stone quarrying, with local sandstone being used in several government and university buildings in the Pacific Northwest. With a decrease in demand for stone, the town converted one abandoned quarry into a community pool. Its downtown district is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Tenino gained notoriety during the Great Depression for the use of wooden money as public currency for its residents, a practice briefly revived during the COVID-19 pandemic. These theories have been disproven for decades, but keep resurfacing because definitive proof of the actual origin was lacking.
According to city historian Richard A. Edwards, the name "Tenino" was used by a steamboat of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company (OSN) on the Columbia and Snake rivers. The company had transported a Northern Pacific committee in early October 1872 prior to the town's founding; Northern Pacific had also acquired a controlling interest in the OSN earlier that year.
On October 12, 1872, at a meeting in Portland, Oregon, shortly after their tour up the Columbia River, John C. Ainsworth and other officers of the OSN made a presentation about their common interests, President Cass proposed a resolution that also named the momentarily Northern terminus near Hodgden's station "Tenino". As reported the following month in The Washington Standard, this connection allowed travel from the "old Tenino" (the OSN steamboat which held the record for traveling the farthest east up the Snake River), to "the new town" of Tenino which was the railroad's then current northwest terminus.
In early 1873, the Northern Pacific Railroad and local homesteader Stephen Hodgden filed plats in Thurston county establishing the town of Tenino. By late 1873, the financial backing of the railroad was in financial crisis and their stock in the OSN was sold for debt, ending the railroad's direct connection to the steamboat Tenino. The steamboat Tenino was itself named after the Tenino native band who once lived near The Dalles in Oregon and whose descendants are now part of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs.
The name also appears informally as "T-9-O," a shortened variation in use as early as 1873.
History
19th-century beginnings
The city was officially incorporated on July 24, 1906, but Tenino existed as a rural community since the mid-19th century, the area containing a population of approximately 170 people by 1870 and the site fully platted in 1873. Initially, American settlers were attracted to the open prairies created and maintained by local natives through controlled burns to cultivate camas root, a staple food source. Records indicate the initial settlers' community centered on the prairie approximately south of the present town. Early residents named their first post office and school "Coal Bank", in the 1860s, a reference to a nearby coal outcropping. It was later renamed Tenino.
The railroad ended at Tenino for a time after Northern Pacific underwent financial difficulties, making the town the final passenger and freight stop on the line to Olympia. Timber production and manufacturing, as well as agriculture and mining, were early economic factors in Tenino, contributing to the community's growth. The largest part of the local economy was the quarrying of sandstone. Numerous buildings in Tenino's early days of formation were built of sandstone. Eventually, Tenino sandstone was used in the construction of the Old Capitol Building and the old Thurston County Courthouse in Olympia, the rebuilt Seattle public library, Logging, saw mills, and coal mining remained as well established industries in the area.
Since the mid-1970s, the US Army has used a geographical map of Tenino as a training aid in map reading, because of the variety of symbols represented on the map.
21st century
While Tenino retains its historic downtown, now a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the town serves largely as a "bedroom community", many of its citizens commuting by car to larger cities such as Olympia and Tacoma for work.
Protests were held in the city in 2023 to voice opposition to the creation of a state contracted transitional facility for sex offenders that would have been located next to Tenino's City Park. The facility operator cancelled the project after a few weeks of objections from the community. Due to the dissent, several bills were proposed in the state legislature that would add stricter requirements and better communication policies regarding sex offender housing.
A sesquicentennial jubilee celebrating Tenino's 150 years as a recognized community was held in July 2023. The day-long event hosted a parade and vendor markets, with the highlight of a "birthday card" written in chalk by artists on a closed intersection in the city. The city's U.S. House of Representative at the time, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, bestowed Tenino with a Congressional Record copy of a floor speech she gave honoring the community and its achievement. In December, a bill was introduced at the state legislature that would declare Tenino sandstone as the state rock.
Wooden money
thumb|right|Tenino wooden money
Tenino briefly achieved national notoriety during the Great Depression of the 1930s. After the local bank failed in 1931, the town government temporarily issued wooden money scrip, made of thin-cut cedar and spruce, and was used by Tenino's residents when cash was scarce. However, most of this wooden currency was never redeemed as it became a valuable collector's item. The Tenino Depot Museum continues to use the original printing machinery, creating new wooden tender for souvenir purposes, but the dollars can still be used at some Tenino businesses. The revival of the program was approved by the Washington State Auditor and began in May 2020.
Wooden scrip from both the Great Depression and Covid periods were added to a Smithsonian National Museum of American History exhibit, titled "The Value of Money", in 2025.
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all of it land.