Federal Way, WA news and local guide

Federal Way began as a logging settlement. Its first homestead was established in 1871 by Sam Stone near today's Redondo, and other settlers followed. The area was first called Federal Way when five school districts consolidated in 1929 into School District No. 210 and planned Federal Way High School, which opened in 1930. The name came from U.S. Route 99, now Pacific Highway South, a federally designated highway between Seattle and Tacoma that followed an earlier road between Fort Steilacoom and Fort Bellingham, completed in the 1850s and later known as Military Road. The local chamber of commerce adopted the name in the early 1950s.

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In the 1940s and 1950s motels and restaurants opened to serve the growing number of motorists on the Pacific Highway. The area's first shopping mall, Federal Shopping Way, opened in 1955 with a small amusement park called Santafair and an Old World Square reproducing historic European buildings. In the 1960s historic Pacific Northwest buildings were moved there as well, including the log cabin of the Seattle pioneer David Denny and a Catholic church from the Muckleshoot Indian Reservation. Sources Wikipedia: Federal Way, Washington