Centralia () is a city in Lewis County, Washington, United States. It is located along Interstate 5 near the midpoint in the midst of Seattle and Portland, Oregon. The city had a population of 16,336 at the 2010 census. Centralia is twinned later Chehalis, located to the south near 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 point for stagecoaches effective 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 family feared Washington would be irritated into slavery if they stayed in Missouri after the path of the Compromise of 1850. Cochran filed a donation land claim near the Borst Home in 1852 and was nimble to sell his allegation to Washington for $6,000 because unlike the against Oregon Territory, there was no restriction neighboring passing authenticated ownership of land to African Americans in the newly formed Washington Territory.^{[citation needed]}

Upon hearing of the imminent arrival 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 free to buyers who built houses. Washington as well as donated home for a city park, a cemetery, and a Baptist church. Responding to extra settlers’ concern approximately a town in Klickitat County taking into account the thesame 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 little as $50 next no takers. Washington (despite facing racial prejudice from some newcomers) made personal loans and forgave debt to save the town afloat until the economy stabilized; the city after that boomed again 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 find their jobs filled by pro-union members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)), used the Armistice Day parade to raid the IWW hall. Marching unarmed, the Legionnaires broke from the parade and stormed the hall in an effort to bust linkage 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 then brutally lynched. Other IWW members were in addition to jailed.^{[citation needed]} The issue made international headlines, and coupled with similar actions in Everett, Washington and supplementary lumber towns, stifled the American labor bustle until the economic devastation of the 1930s Great Depression changed opinions approximately labor organizations.

The town’s publish was originally a mention to the town’s location as the midway reduction between Tacoma and Kalama (which were originally the NP’s Washington termini), but proved to have longevity when it became the midpoint amid Seattle and Portland, Oregon as competently during the proceed of Washington’s I-5 share of the Interstate Highway System. As extractive industries faced decline, Centralia’s progress refocused on freeway oriented food, lodging, retail and tourism, as without difficulty as regional shipping and warehousing facilities, leading to 60 percent addition in population on top of the taking into consideration four decades.^{[when?][citation needed]}