Lacey, Washington

The city of Lacey grew out of a settler community that kept losing its name. Isaac Wood put down roots here on Chambers Prairie in eighteen fifty-three and the settlement went by Woodland for decades, until the postal service informed residents there was already a Woodland in Washington and demanded a new name. They chose Lacey, most likely for Oliver Chester Lacey, an Olympia real estate agent and promoter who had arrived in the area around eighteen eighty-nine.

A train depot opened in eighteen ninety-one alongside a post office and a horse racetrack. The city sat unincorporated for most of its existence, officially incorporating only in December of nineteen sixty-six, by which point Joint Base Lewis-McChord next door had already transformed the surrounding area into one of the fastest-growing corridors in the Pacific Northwest.