How the city got its name

By DON TEWKESBURY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

An old Indian trail was expanded into a military road during the Indian wars of 1855-56. One branch of the trail went from Tenino to Tumwater and the other toward the Nisqually River, Fort Steilacoom and Fort Lawton. The trail to Tacoma was the same route eventually followed by Old Highway 99.

Among those who helped build the road was a young lieutenant named Ulysses S. Grant.

U.S. Route 99 (Pacific Highway South) was built in 1915. Because it was federally financed, the road was known locally as a "federal highway." The first school built along the route took the name "Federal Way," and, in 1929, area school districts were consolidated to form the Federal Way School District.

The surrounding community then adopted the name Federal Way, though a smallgroup of citizens once campaigned unsuccessfully to change the name to "Twelve Lakes," for the dozen small lakes in the area.

The Federal Way Historical Society says the city was once a line on a map in the 1840s when the British offered the first compromise after claiming sovereignty in the Oregon Territory south to the Columbia River. If the UnitedStates had agreed to that initial compromise, South 312th Street would be the Canadian-American border.

It was 20 years after the construction of Military Road in 1856 before the arrival of the area's first settlers, who built their homes or log cabins on the waterfront at Stone's Landing (now Redondo), around the area's many lakes or on timber claims and 160-acre homesteads.

Federal Way remained largely rural and undeveloped until after World War II. Since then, it has experienced tremendous residential and commercial growth.

Federal Way now is the site of Weyerhaeuser's international headquarters, aU.S. Postal Service bulk mailing facility, the SeaTac Mall shopping center, the Federal Way Shopping Mall and a strip of retail shops along Pacific Highway South.

After a number of unsuccessful attempts to incorporate a 40-square-mile area with an estimated total population of 85,000, Federal Way citizens voted last March to incorporate an area containing about 58,000 residents. The move made it the sixth-largest city in the state.