South Puget Sound

South Puget Sound is the southern reaches of Puget Sound in Southwest Washington, in the United States' Pacific Northwest. It is one of five major basins comprising the entire Sound, and the shallowest basin, with a mean depth of 37 meters (121 ft). Exact definitions of the region vary: the state's Department of Fish and Wildlife counts all of Puget Sound south of the Narrows for fishing regulatory purposes. The same agency counts Mason, Jefferson, Kitsap, Pierce and Thurston Counties for wildlife management. The state's Department of Ecology defines a similar area south of Colvos Passage.

The term "South Sound Region" or just "South Sound" is used to apply to the communities surrounding the water. The South Sound contains the Olympia-Tumwater Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Shelton Micropolitan Statistical Area. The terms appear in names of local institutions and commercial entities such as South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia and South Sound Center in Lacey.

Archaeology indicates that continuous human occupation began approximately ten thousand years ago by the Salish peoples who still live there. Lieutenant Peter Puget perhaps made first contact with the indigenous peoples and first charted the South Sound in the 1790s, giving rise to the original "Puget's Sound", which was then just the area south of the Narrows.Fort Nisqually was established in 1832, and Fort Steilacoom became the territorial militia headquarters in August 1849. Both preceded by decades Fort Lewis (now Joint Base Lewis-McChord), which was created for World War I. The Medicine Creek Treaty between the tribes and the United States was signed in 1854 at the Nisqually River delta in the South Sound area, when settlers from other parts of America began to arrive.

Olympia became a settlement in the 1840s, providing access to inland areas in Southwest Washington. Tumwater pioneers Michael Simmons, born in Kentucky, and George Washington Bush, a multiracial War of 1812 veteran from Pennsylvania, were among the first Puget Sound settlers from the United States in 1844. Simmons and Bush likely hacked a path through virgin forest from the Oregon Trail. In 1860 the route was made into a military road between Fort Vancouver on the Columbia to Forts Nisqually and Steilacoom on the Sound.

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