The name came from a Seattle real estate man, Charles T. Conover, who used it in an 1890 booklet promoting the brand-new state. It stuck.
Three trees fill the old forests of the Puget Sound lowlands. Douglas fir grows tall and straight. Western red cedar gave the Coast Salish peoples wood and bark for canoes, longhouses, baskets and clothing. And western hemlock became Washington's state tree in 1947.
West Seattle still has a piece of that old forest. Schmitz Preserve is one of the last stands of old-growth forest in the city, with firs, cedars and a quiet creek trail.