Tampico is a census-designated place and unincorporated community in Yakima County, Washington, United States, located approximately eighteen miles west of Yakima on Ahtanum Creek.

[2] The community was named Tampico by pioneer cattleman A. D. Elgin, for a town in Mexico where he once lived.

[4] Chief Kamiakin—who led the Yakama, Palouse, and Klickitat in the Yakima War—was born at Ahtanum Creek near Tampico in 1800.

[5] Near that site, St. Joseph's Mission was built in 1852,[6] to be subsequently destroyed and rebuilt more than once; services are still regularly performed there.

This Yakima County, Washington state location article is a stub.