About Washington

Washington is the only state named after a U.S. president. When Congress organized the territory in 1853, it was carved out of the Oregon Territory and initially proposed to be called Columbia, after the Columbia River. However, to avoid confusion with the District of Columbia, Congress renamed it Washington Territory in honor of George Washington, the first president and the most celebrated figure of the founding generation. Washington became a state in 1889. The naming of the state after Washington, rather than using an indigenous name for the region as many neighboring states did, reflects the mid-19th century tendency to honor national heroes as the country expanded westward.

Washington stands at the meeting point of ancient wilderness and 21st-century economic power. The western half of the state is defined by rain, old growth, volcanoes, and Puget Sound, a vast inland sea that made Seattle one of the great port cities of the Pacific. The eastern half is a different world: sun-drenched, agricultural, conservative, and producing more apples than anywhere else on earth.

The state's Indigenous nations, dozens of distinct peoples who built complex civilizations around the Pacific salmon, have shaped Washington's identity from its earliest days to the present. The 1974 Boldt Decision affirmed tribal fishing rights in a ruling that transformed Pacific Northwest fisheries management and remains one of the most significant federal court rulings in U.S. environmental law.

Modern Washington is the wealthiest state per capita in the nation, driven by the tech empires of Amazon and Microsoft, a world-class aerospace industry built by Boeing, and a knowledge economy that has attracted talent from every corner of the globe. It has no state income tax, votes reliably Democratic in federal elections, and has long been a laboratory for progressive policy, from universal vote-by-mail to early legalization of recreational marijuana and same-sex marriage.