Editing Sequim, Washington (section)

==History==

===Indigenous inhabitants===
Fossils discovered in the late 1970s – at a dig near Sequim known as the [[Manis Mastodon site]], by Carl Gustafson, an archaeologist at [[Washington State University]] – included a [[mastodon]] bone with an embedded bone point, evidencing the presence of hunters in the area about 14,000 years ago. According to Michael R. Waters, an archaeologist at [[Texas A&M University]], this is the first hunting weapon found that dates to the pre-[[Clovis culture|Clovis]] period.

The [[Klallam|S'Klallam]] tribe had inhabited the region prior to the arrival of the first Europeans. S'Klallam means  "the strong people".  The band of S'Klallam Indians disbanded into their own individual federally recognized tribes in the early 1900s.  The local tribe is the Jamestown S'Klallam tribe, named after one of their early leaders, Lord James Balch. According to other tales, the town Sequim in S'Klallam means "a place for going to shoot", which represents the abundance of game and wildlife of the area.<ref>{{cite news|title='Quiet waters'? Sequim means something else entirely|agency=Associated Press|newspaper=[[The Seattle Times]]|date=August 4, 2010|url=http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012524922_sequim04.html|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100805054321/http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012524922_sequim04.html|archive-date=August 5, 2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite book
 | author=Olympic Peninsula Intertribal Cultural Advisory Committee | editor=Jacilee Wray | year=2003
 | title=Native Peoples of the Olympic Peninsula: Who We Are
 | page=35 | publisher=University of Oklahoma Press
 | isbn=0-8061-3552-2 }}</ref> Archeological excavation during construction of the [[U.S. Route 101 in Washington|U.S. Route 101]] bypass in the 1990s found artifacts that were dated between 6000 to 8000 years [[before present]].<ref>{{harvp|Olympic Peninsula Intertribal Cultural Advisory Committee|2003|p=7}}</ref>

===Settlement===
[[Manuel Quimper]] and [[George Vancouver]] explored the region's coast in the 1790s. The first European settlers arrived in the Dungeness Valley in the 1850s, settling nearby [[Dungeness, Washington]]. While the lands along the river became fertile farmlands, the remainder of the area remained arid prairie, known as "the desert".<ref name=mass /> Irrigation canals first brought water to the prairie in the 1890s, allowing the expansion of farmlands.

Sequim was officially incorporated on October 31, 1913. For many decades small farms, mostly dairy farms, dotted the area around the small town. Near the end of World War I, Sequim became a stop for a railway that passed through from [[Port Angeles]] to [[Port Townsend]], built primarily to carry wood products from the forests of the western [[Olympic Peninsula]].