Mineral, Washington

Mineral is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Lewis County, Washington, on State Route 7 near the Pierce/Lewis county line. As of the 2020 census, Mineral had a population of 193.

Mineral originally began as a logging camp and mining town. Prospectors searching the area for gold instead found coal and arsenic. By the early 1920s, the mines closed and a devastating fire to the town's largest sawmill ended the early, peak years of the community. Mineral began to turn to tourism as its main industry, primarily through recreational fishing on Mineral Lake. A local attraction is the Mineral Log Lodge, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The area was first settled by non-indigenous people in the 1890s, mostly homesteaders and coal mining and timber prospectors. The earliest known settler was the Fritz family in 1891. The town was founded no later than 1897 on the shore of Mineral Lake, adopting the name from the lake and the veins of ruby of arsenic in the region. The area was referred to as Mineral City and Mineral Creek in its early days. The lake was originally known as Round Top Lake and also as Goldsboro Lake. Many of Mineral’s settlers were from Kentucky.

Primarily known as a timber community, Mineral's economic beginnings started with a false find of silver on Mineral Creek in 1892, leading to land speculation and a silver rush. A small colony under the name Mineral City, and an undeveloped camp known as Contact City, began but lack of the promised metal led to abandonment. The remains of both mining sites disappeared after a flood in 1902.

In place of silver, arsenic mines were opened and the first roads into the community were built in 1900. The first store opened in 1902. A rail line to the community that offered passenger and freight services was completed in 1905 by the Tacoma Eastern Railroad, leading to the economic expansion of what would become Mineral. The arsenic mines were temporarily successful for approximately five years but they began to wane, losing value as the market for the mineral disappeared. A minor recession occurred due to the closing of the mines as workers were paid in company stock rather than wages.

Timber became a major economic force in Mineral after the Mineral Logging Company sawmill was constructed in 1907, at one point employing 200 people. Mineral Lake was often used as a holding pond due to the vast amounts of logging and children who swam in the lake often received infections known as "cedar poisoning". The population peaked at 1,000 residents, and possibly as high as 1,600, by the 1920s, with a flourishing downtown district that contained three general stores, an ice cream shop and a variety of entertainment venues. A movie house showed three different films per week. Tourism was an important economic engine during this time and the town grew large enough to contain two hotels and an automobile agency.

During Mineral's timber years, Scandinavian and Japanese laborer communities existed in the town. Although Japanese children attended the local school, the Japanese community remained separate from the white population of Mineral.

Several factors led to the decrease of the town. Leading the decline was conversion to oil as a primary fuel burning source after World War I and a destructive coal mine fire in 1920. In the following years, coal efforts ceased due to more efficient mining methods, and the largest mill, owned by the Mineral Lake Lumber Company, was destroyed by fire in 1922 and never rebuilt. The town shrunk in size and became a "bedroom community".