Western Washington is a region of the United States defined as the area of Washington State west of the Cascade Mountains. This region is home to the state's largest city, Seattle, the state capital, Olympia, and most of the state's residents. The climate is generally far more damp and temperate than that of Eastern Washington.
The Archdiocese of Seattle (Latin: Archidiœcesis Seattlensis) is an archdiocese of the Catholic Church in western Washington State in the United States. The diocese was known as the Diocese of Nesqually from 1850 to 1907. The mother church of the archdiocese is St. James Cathedral in Seattle. Its archbishop is Paul D. Etienne. The archdiocese succeeded to the Diocese of Nesqually headquartered in Vancouver, Washington, established in 1850 as a suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of Oregon City. The diocese was elevated to metropolitan archdiocesan status in 1951.
The Olympic Peninsula is a large peninsula in Western Washington that lies across Puget Sound from Seattle, and contains Olympic National Park. It is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean, the north by the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the east by Hood Canal. Cape Alava, the westernmost point in the contiguous United States, and Cape Flattery, the northwesternmost point, are on the peninsula. Comprising about 3,600 square miles (9,300 km), the Olympic Peninsula contained many of the last unexplored places in the contiguous United States. It remained largely unmapped until Arthur Dodwell and Theodore Rixon mapped most of its topography and timber resources between 1898 and 1900.