In-Home Drug Testing Dupont, WA

Local Area Info: DuPont, Washington

For 10,000 years the Nisqually Tribe lived in relative peace and prosperity in its aboriginal homeland of about 2 million acres near the present-day towns of Olympia, Tenino, and Dupont, and extending to Mount Rainier. Tribal life changed radically with the advent of Euro-American settlement about 150 years ago. Forced to compromise its interests and rights over the years, the Tribe has always sought to maintain its integrity and dignity. Subsisting on shellfish from the beaches and salmon from Sequalitchew Creek. Captain George Vancouver mapped the area in 1792, and in 1833, the Hudson's Bay Company established a fur trading post at Fort Nisqually as a halfway point between Ft. Vancouver and Ft. Langley. The fort was relocated upstream in 1843. It was relocated to expand on the fort to house more workers and to have better access to fresh water.

The first school in the area was the Nisqually Methodist Mission school, which operated from 1840 through 1842. Chloe A. Clark was appointed teacher at the mission school. The first public school was established in 1852. By 1869 the Hudson Bay Company had to sell the land to the United States for $650,000. The Oregon Treaty of 1846 gave the land of the Oregon Territory to the U.S. but still allowed the HBC to continue to operate in the area. American farmers in the area resented this decision and pushed out the company by developing their own market place and squatting on company land. By 1865 there were about 150 illegal squatters on company property who would harass the livestock of the Hudson's Bay Company. A few of the farmers urged Congress to remove the fort as well as the Puget Sound Agricultural Company from the Pacific Northwest. These conditions made it hard to continue operations in the region so the fort was closed. The land was up for grabs once Hudson's Bay Company left and many farmers bought the land. In 1906, DuPont purchased a 5-square-mile (13 km2) area for construction of an explosives plant from the farmers as the company was in the midst of expanding their business to the west. The plant was built on the initial 1833 Ft. Nisqually site and would produce dynamite for the U.S. military and for the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam. By 1909, the company town had more than 100 houses.

DuPont was officially incorporated on March 26, 1912, and was re-incorporated in 1951. The dynamite plant was shutdown in 1975 and afterwards the land was purchased by the Weyerhaeuser company for $12 million. The 3,200 acres of land was initially planned to be used as a lumber export plant but the company later decided to further develop the town under a New Urbanism model. DuPont has recently undergone a modern transformation as the modern planned community of "Northwest Landing" has been realized. The city is expected to have a built-out population of more than 12,000.