 The city was originally a company town and gets its name from the DuPont chemical company, which operated an explosives manufacturing plant in the area from 1909 to 1975.For 10,000 years the Nisqually Tribe lived in relative peace and prosperity in its aboriginal homeland of about 2 million acres near the present-day towns of Olympia, Tenino, and DuPont, and extending to Mount Rainier.Tribal life changed radically with the advent of Euro-American settlement about 150 years ago.