Rainier is a city in southeastern Thurston County, Washington, in the rolling rural country between Olympia and the foothills of the Cascade Range. Its history is a classic Western Washington story: it began as a railroad stop in the 1870s, was settled in 1890, and became known as a logging town before incorporating as a city in 1947. The name reflects the landscape — earlier known as Eminence and then Fox's Landing, the community took the name Rainier in the 1850s because Mount Rainier is visible from the hills around it, and that mountain remains the horizon's defining feature. Today Rainier is best understood as a rural-suburban community. Its population is about 2,500, and the majority of residents commute out of town for work, primarily to Olympia and the Tacoma area, with Joint Base Lewis-McChord a major regional employer to the north. The town retains a small, self-contained character: it has its own three-campus school district, a modest commercial core, and a local identity rooted in its timber and railroad past rather than in suburban growth. Rainier is served by the Rainier School District, which educates roughly 1,000 students from the town and surrounding countryside, keeping education local and community-centered. Nearby Yelm provides additional shopping and services, and Olympia — the state capital — is about a half-hour away through Yelm, offering government employment, higher education, and urban amenities. Rainier suits people who want a quiet, rural way of life in the South Sound: space for acreage, a small-town school district, mountain views, and a manageable commute to Olympia, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, and Tacoma.