Centralia () is a city in Lewis County, Washington, United States. It is located along Interstate 5 near the midpoint between Seattle and Portland, Oregon. The city had a population of 16,336 at the 2010 census. Centralia is twinned past Chehalis, located to the south close the confluence of the Chehalis and Newaukum rivers.

In the 1850s and 1860s, Centralia’s Borst Home, at the confluence of the Chehalis and Skookumchuck Rivers, was the site of a toll ferry, and the halfway stopping narrowing for stagecoaches committed between Kalama, Washington and Tacoma. In 1850, J. G. Cochran and his wife Anna were led there via the Oregon Trail by their adopted son, George Washington, a pardon African-American. The intimates feared Washington would be forced into slavery if they stayed in Missouri after the lane of the Compromise of 1850. Cochran filed a donation land claim near the Borst Home in 1852 and was adept to sell his claim to Washington for $6,000 because unlike the adjacent to Oregon Territory, there was no restriction against passing legal ownership of house to African Americans in the newly formed Washington Territory.^{[citation needed]}

Upon hearing of the imminent introduction of the Northern Pacific Railway (NP) in 1872, Washington and his wife, Mary Jane, filed a plat for the town of Centerville, naming the streets after biblical references and offering lots for $10 each, with one lot pardon to buyers who built houses. Washington next donated home for a city park, a cemetery, and a Baptist church. Responding to supplementary settlers’ concern practically a town in Klickitat County following the similar name, the town was renamed Centralia by 1883, as suggested by a recent settler from Centralia, Illinois, and officially incorporated upon February 3, 1886. The town’s population boomed, then collapsed in the Panic of 1893, when the NP went bankrupt; entire city blocks were offered for as Tiny as $50 similar to no takers. Washington (despite facing racial prejudice from some newcomers) made personal loans and forgave debt to keep the town afloat until the economy stabilized; the city subsequently boomed once more based upon the coal, lumber and dairying industries. When Washington died in 1905, all businesses in the town closed, and 5,000 mourners attended his funeral.^{[citation needed]}

The boom lasted until November 11, 1919, when the infamous Centralia Massacre occurred. Spurred on by local lumber barons, American Legionnaires (many of whom had returned from WWI to locate their jobs filled by pro-union members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)), used the Armistice Day parade to invasion the IWW hall. Marching unarmed, the Legionnaires broke from the parade and stormed the hall in an effort to bust sticking together organizing efforts by what was seen to be a Bolshevik-inspired labor movement. IWW workers including recently returned WWI veteran Wesley Everest, stood their ground, engaged and killed four Legionnaires. Everest was captured, jailed and later brutally lynched. Other IWW members were as well as jailed.^{[citation needed]} The issue made international headlines, and coupled with similar actions in Everett, Washington and other lumber towns, stifled the American labor doings until the economic devastation of the 1930s Great Depression untouched opinions just about labor organizations.

The town’s pronounce was originally a reference to the town’s location as the midway point between Tacoma and Kalama (which were originally the NP’s Washington termini), but proved to have longevity when it became the midpoint in the company of Seattle and Portland, Oregon as without difficulty during the build up of Washington’s I-5 allocation of the Interstate Highway System. As extractive industries faced decline, Centralia’s take forward refocused on freeway oriented food, lodging, retail and tourism, as capably as regional shipping and warehousing facilities, leading to 60 percent growth in population more than the later than four decades.^{[when?][citation needed]}