History:

The Town of Elma developed as a trading center for the homesteaders who began settling in the Chehalis River Valley prior to 1860.As the population grew, the residents, whose only local government was Chehalis County with its distant county seat, determined a need to establish a municipal government. Consequently, the Town of Elma was incorporated on March 22, 1888.

Joseph Young and James Long Waldrip combined equal portions of the land, each of them had acquired, and laid out the original plat, which is now the center of the City. Young officially recorded the plat in 1875, three years after Waldrip had left the area for Eastern Washington.Waldrip's legacy to the town was the first post office, first gristmill, a store, two lumber mills and the first blacksmith shop.

The construction of the Tacoma, Olympia, and Grays Harbor Railroad line through town further established Elma as the major commercial service center in the Eastern portion of what is now Grays Harbor County. Timber harvesting and processing and agriculture were the two engines that drove the Elma economy from its beginnings; and continue, today, as two important mainstays of the local economy.

Recent years have seen the diversification of the local economy, from the establishment of a chemical manufacturing plant in the 1970s; to the conversion of the site of a terminated power generating construction project into the Satsop Development Park, which now accommodates a number of technology and manufacturing businesses and establishment of the East County Industrial Park.