In 1833, the British Hudson's Bay Company established the first Fort Nisqually as a fur trading post in the area now known as DuPont, Washington. When the second Fort Nisqually closed in 1870, its last commander, Edward Huggins, homesteaded the old fort site. In 1906, the DuPont Company, founded in 1802 by E.I. DuPont, purchased land from Huggins and other small farmers and constructed a powder works plant to manufacture explosives. In order to house plant workers and their families, the company created a village, named DuPont. At its height, the company employed approximately 400 people at the plant, with 600 living in the village. In 1951, the town incorporated. Due to a waning need for powdered explosives, the DuPont Company closed the plant in 1976 and sold its property to the Weyerhaeuser Company. A period of rapid growth in business development followed, and DuPont now confidently faces the future as a modern city.