Fort Steilacoom, Military heritage museum in Pierce County, United States.

Fort Steilacoom is a military museum in Pierce County with four preserved cottages from the original 19th-century post. The buildings contain artifacts and documents that illustrate daily life at the fort and regional settlement patterns.

The fort was established in 1849 as the first United States Army post north of the Columbia River in Washington Territory. It became a key location for military presence and the settlement of the region.

The fort's story is bound up with the Nisqually leader Leschi, tried for the death of Colonel Abram Benton Moses after the 1855 skirmish at Connell's Prairie and hanged at what is now Lakewood on February 19, 1858; he was exonerated in 2004. The four preserved cottages now serve as a living museum of the fort era.

All four preserved cottages are part of the living museum, so plan to see the whole row rather than a subset. The grounds also hold the fort-era civilian cemetery; the known military graves were moved to San Francisco National Cemetery in the 1890s. The site lies between Lake Steilacoom and the town of Steilacoom, and the buildings are now within the Western State Hospital campus.

A cemetery on the grounds holds burials of civilian residents from the fort era, while military graves were relocated to San Francisco. This split reflects how the two communities were treated differently in death.