Tenino () is a city in Thurston County, Washington, United States. The population was 1,870 at the 2020 census.
Incorporated in 1906, the city sits upon land first established as a food-source prairie for Native Americans living in the area. The town grew around an economy of stone quarrying, with local sandstone being used in several government and university buildings in the Pacific Northwest. With a decrease in demand for stone, the town converted one abandoned quarry into a community pool. Its downtown district is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Tenino gained notoriety during the Great Depression for the use of wooden money as public currency for its residents, a practice briefly revived during the COVID-19 pandemic. The city was named for a steamboat used during a railroad committee expedition.
Etymology The origin of the name Tenino, used by the Northern Pacific Railroad for their station when it was completed on October 8, 1872, has been debated for over a century. One theory suggests that Tenino was a Chinook Jargon word translated to mean fork or branch and was a named waypoint on an indigenous trail that traversed through the area before it was converted into a military road during the Puget Sound War. A second hypothesis mentions that the moniker is taken from the railroad's number for a locomotive engine, survey stake, or train car, often described in forms such as T9o, 10-9-0, or engine No. 1090. These theories have been disproven for decades, but keep resurfacing because definitive proof of the actual origin was lacking.
According to city historian Richard A. Edwards, the name "Tenino" was used by a steamboat of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company (OSN) on the Columbia and Snake rivers. The company had transported a Northern Pacific committee in early October 1872 prior to the town's founding; Northern Pacific had also acquired a controlling interest in the OSN earlier that year.
On October 12, 1872, at a meeting in Portland, Oregon, shortly after their tour up the Columbia River, John C. Ainsworth and other officers of the OSN made a presentation about their common interests, President Cass proposed a resolution that also named the momentarily Northern terminus near Hodgden's station "Tenino". As reported the following month in The Washington Standard, this connection allowed travel from the "old Tenino" (the OSN steamboat which held the record for traveling the farthest east up the Snake River), to "the new town" of Tenino which was the railroad's then current northwest terminus.
In early 1873, the Northern Pacific Railroad and local homesteader Stephen Hodgden filed plats in Thurston county establishing the town of Tenino. By late 1873, the financial backing of the railroad was in financial crisis and their stock in the OSN was sold for debt, ending the railroad's direct connection to the steamboat Tenino. The steamboat Tenino was itself named after the Tenino native band who once lived near The Dalles in Oregon and whose descendants are now part of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs.
The name also appears informally as "T-9-O," a shortened variation in use as early as 1873."The Territories" Sacramento Daily Union, May 28, 1873.
History
19th-century beginnings The city was officially incorporated on July 24, 1906, but Tenino existed as a rural community since the mid-19th century, the area containing a population of approximately 170 people by 1870 and the site fully platted in 1873. Initially, American settlers were attracted to the open prairies created and maintained by local natives through controlled burns to cultivate camas root, a staple food source. Records indicate the initial settlers' community centered on the prairie approximately south of the present town. Early residents named their first post office and school "Coal Bank", in the 1860s, a reference to a nearby coal outcropping.Guy Ramsey, Postmarked Washington: Thurston County Thurston Co Historic Commission, n.d. 44. It was later renamed Tenino.
The railroad ended at Tenino for a time after Northern Pacific underwent financial difficulties, making the town the final passenger and freight stop on the line to Olympia. Timber production and manufacturing, as well as agriculture and mining, were early economic factors in Tenino, contributing to the community's growth. The largest part of the local economy was the quarrying of sandstone. Numerous buildings in Tenino's early days of formation were built of sandstone.
The area was rich in sandstone and part of a geologic layer known as the McIntosh Formation. By the late 19th century, a number of sandstone quarrying companies began shipping the stone as a construction material for large buildings on the West Coast. Buildings that used Tenino sandstone withstood two catastrophic events, the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, leading to the increase and popularity of the material. Eventually, Tenino sandstone was used in the construction of the Old Capitol Building and the old Thurston County Courthouse in Olympia, the rebuilt Seattle public library, the Mason County Courthouse in Shelton, the First Congregational Church, developed by Cameron Stone, in Tacoma, Denny Hall and the Theodore Jacobson Observatory at the University of Washington, the Pittock Mansion and the Pioneer Courthouse in Portland, Oregon, the Calvary Presbyterian Church of San Francisco and several US post office buildings, including at The Dalles, Oregon. Additional buildings constructed with Tenio sandstone include the Portland Public Library and the Science Hall at Washington State University. The US Government also used stone from these quarries to construct jetties at Westport, Washington and elsewhere.
20th century The quarries declined in the early 20th century when many builders switched to concrete. Logging, saw mills, and coal mining remained as well established industries in the area. However, as the timber played out and railroads switched to diesel in the mid-20th century, these industries also declined.
During the late 1940s and early 1950s, before the construction of Interstate 5, a notorious stretch along U.S. Route 99 through Tenino gained a reputation as the "Speed Trap of the West". Many motorists considered it a speed trap because of the strict enforcement by police of the abruptly reduced speed limit through town.Guy Reed Ramsey, Postmarked Washington: Thurston County. Thurston Co Historic Commission, 1988, 53.
Since the mid-1970s, the US Army has used a geographical map of Tenino as a training aid in map reading, because of the variety of symbols represented on the map.
On July 29, 1990, the Town of Tenino was reorganized as a Non-Charter Code City following a referendum, resulting in the name being changed to the City of Tenino.
21st century While Tenino retains its historic downtown, now a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the town serves largely as a "bedroom community", many of its citizens commuting by car to larger cities such as Olympia and Tacoma for work.
Protests were held in the city in 2023 to voice opposition to the creation of a state contracted transitional facility for sex offenders that would have been located next to Tenino's City Park. The facility operator cancelled the project after a few weeks of objections from the community. Due to the dissent, several bills were proposed in the state legislature that would add stricter requirements and better communication policies regarding sex offender housing.
A sesquicentennial jubilee celebrating Tenino's 150 years as a recognized community was held in July 2023. The day-long event hosted a parade and vendor markets, with the highlight of a "birthday card" written in chalk by artists on a closed intersection in the city. The city's U.S. House of Representative at the time, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, bestowed Tenino with a Congressional Record copy of a floor speech she gave honoring the community and its achievement. In December, a bill was introduced at the state legislature that would declare Tenino sandstone as the state rock.
Due to ongoing "budget misreporting issues" since 2021, the city council announced in May 2026 the dissolution of the Tenino Police Department. Tenino could no longer afford a police department due to an outstanding $1.6 million debt within the city's budget. The debt was partly due to a lack of hiring consistency at the clerk-treasurer position since 2020, which led to state auditing issues and the non-sanctioned use of unrestricted funds for other budget items and projects. Required by state laws, a retroactive and more expansive interfund loan was created and is scheduled to be paid off in ten years. A temporary, "policing services" contract was authorized between Tenino and the Thurston County Sherriff's Office.
Wooden money
Tenino briefly achieved national notoriety during the Great Depression of the 1930s. After the local bank failed in 1931, the town government temporarily issued wooden money scrip, made of thin-cut cedar and spruce, and was used by Tenino's residents when cash was scarce. However, most of this wooden currency was never redeemed as it became a valuable collector's item.Arthur Dwelley, "Brief History of Tenino" Accessed online at January 20, 2010. The Tenino Depot Museum continues to use the original printing machinery, creating new wooden tender for souvenir purposes, but the dollars can still be used at some Tenino businesses.
The city began printing the wooden currency again during the COVID-19 recession in 2020, to distribute to the local residents. The revival of the program was approved by the Washington State Auditor and began in May 2020.
Wooden scrip from both the Great Depression and Covid periods were added to a Smithsonian National Museum of American History exhibit, titled "The Value of Money", in 2025.
Geography According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all of it land.
Demographics
2020 census
As of the 2020 census, Tenino had a population of 1,870. The median age was 37.3 years. 22.9% of residents were under the age of 18 and 14.5% of residents were 65 years of age or older. For every 100 females there were 95.6 males, and for every 100 females age 18 and over there were 89.1 males age 18 and over.
0.0% of residents lived in urban areas, while 100.0% lived in rural areas.
There were 754 households in Tenino, of which 35.1% had children under the age of 18 living in them. Of all households, 40.5% were married-couple households, 18.8% were households with a male householder and no spouse or partner present, and 28.6% were households with a female householder and no spouse or partner present. About 26.1% of all households were made up of individuals and 11.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.
There were 780 housing units, of which 3.3% were vacant. The homeowner vacancy rate was 0.8% and the rental vacancy rate was 2.0%.
+ Racial composition as of the 2020 census Race Number Percent White 1,528 81.7% Black or African American 18 1.0% American Indian and Alaska Native 32 1.7% Asian 23 1.2% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander 2 0.1% Some other race 61 3.3% Two or more races 206 11.0% Hispanic or Latino (of any race) 148 7.9%
2010 census As of the 2010 census, there were 1,695 people, 691 households, and 440 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 740 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 90.7% White, 0.2% African American, 0.9% Native American, 1.2% Asian, 0.3% Pacific Islander, 2.1% from other races, and 4.6% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 7.4% of the population.