La Push, Washington
unincorporated community in Clallam County, Washington

La Push is a small unincorporated community situated at the mouth of the Quillayute River in the Western Olympic Peninsula. It is the de facto capital and main population center of the Quileute Indian Reservation, which is home to the federally recognized Quileute tribe. La Push is known for its whale-watching and natural environment. The community has historically been located on the coast; however, sea level rise led the community to begin managed retreat to higher grounds in 2017.
History
Etymology
The name La Push is from French term, La Bouche, meaning "The Mouth" of the Quillayute River, adapted into Chinook Jargon.
Quileute Tribe history
La Push, 14 miles from Forks, is home to the Quileute Tribe. Tribal members traditionally built cedar canoes for a variety of uses; they ranged in size from two-man to ocean-going freight vessels capable of carrying three tons. The Quileute ranked second only to the Makah as whalers and first among all the tribes as seal hunters. They bred special woolly-haired dogs and spun and wove their hair into prized warm blankets. According to traditional stories, the Quileutes' only kin, the Chimakum, were separated from them by a great flood that swept them to the Quimper Peninsula on the other side of the North Olympic Peninsula.
“La Push, Washington” enters the record as unincorporated community in Clallam County, Washington. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Push, Washington and unincorporated can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“La Push, Washington” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Push, Washington and unincorporated provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q554902. VIAF identifies the subject as 153972798. The Library of Congress control number is no2006044429. Authority coordinates are 47.905, -124.626. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “La Push, Washington” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.