Steilacoom (/ˈstɪləkəm/ STIL-ə-kəm) is a town in Pierce County, Washington, United States.

It has also become a bedroom community for service members stationed at Joint Base Lewis–McChord, aka McChord AFB and Fort Lewis.

According to the Legacy Washington program, the town's name is derived from a Native American word meaning "little pink flower.

[9] William Bright says the name comes from the Southern Coast Salish subgroup /č'tílqʷəbš/, anglicized as "Steilacoom".

European-American settlement at Steilacoom began with Lafayette Balch, a sea captain from Maine who arrived in 1851.

The following year, Balch opened a sawmill to process and export lumber to San Francisco and named the settlement "Port Steilacoom".

It has four individual buildings and sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including the oldest Catholic Church in the state, the first Protestant Church north of the Columbia River, as well as the Steilacoom Historic District, with 68 contributing properties.

[citation needed] The town remained prominent in the region until the construction of the Northern Pacific Railway, which opened in 1873 with a terminus in Tacoma.

The county seat was moved from Steilacoom to Tacoma in 1880; an interurban streetcar was built in 1891 to connect the two cities.

[12] Fort Steilacoom was redeveloped into Western State Hospital, a state-run mental health facility that now lies in the adjacent and larger city of Lakewood.

Steilacoom is situated on Puget Sound between the Nisqually River delta and the Tacoma Narrows.

The city is bordered to the south by Joint Base Lewis–McChord, a major military installation, and to the north by Chambers Bay, a public golf course.

Drivers can access Interstate 5 or State Route 512 by driving through the adjacent city of Lakewood.