A company-built settlement where by the 1940s, approximately 225 employees of the Dupont Powder Company Plant have their homes. In the 1940s the route into town wound down a pleasant forested lane, the road was lined with ornamental lamp standards and bordered by tree-shaded houses.

Today, new development has changed the character of the approach to town. More than several thousand people now call DuPont home as do several small to large businesses. It is no longer a closed community and is looking to expand.

The settlement stands upon grounds once occupied by old Fort Nisqually, a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post established in 1833. The original fort was built close to the beach but was later removed to a site on the hill, within a few hundred feet of what is now the main gate to the restricted area. Indians and traders gathered here to barter. Sea-battered craft lay at anchor off shore, while their crews exchanged news and swapped yarns. The ruins of Fort Nisqually have been removed to Tacoma, and the post has been reconstructed in Point Defiance Park.

The town was named for E. I. du Pont de Nemours Company, founder of an explosive-manufacturing industry. The name Northwest Landing has been attached to the development of a planned community by the Weyerhaeuser Corporation on lands that were once part of the explosives plant.