Mills & Mills Funeral Home & Memorial Park

Your dedicated funeral provider

We understand that losing a loved one is an emotional and difficult experience. Mills & Mills Funeral Home is a warm, welcoming environment with services designed to help you through one of the most personal and challenging stages of life.

Our welcoming facility offers a full kitchen, spacious foyer and chapel with robust video and audio capabilities.

Whether you wish to arrange for a traditional funeral or a celebration of life ceremony, plan to have a large gathering or would like a more intimate service, our team will work with you 1-on-1 to ensure your needs, wishes and budget are met. It is our promise to provide you with the utmost care and to create a ceremony that is special and meaningful.

Mills & Mills Memorial Park

The sister location to the funeral home, Mills & Mills Memorial Park is a beautiful cemetery surrounded by wooded land. Within our cemetery grounds, you'll find the Pacific Northwest spirit alive and thriving. We specifically care for and maintain many special trees and plants: giant sequoias, maples, pines and an 88-foot-tall American chestnut tree—the largest in the Pacific Northwest and renowned as the largest healthy member of its species in the United States.

Currently, only 18 of the memorial park's 32 acres are developed for cemetery use. The remaining land remains open for future gardens, features and generations. The cemetery currently maintains 10 gardens for ground burial, each with its own special features. We have a mausoleum for above-ground entombment and various niche walls for cremation urn placement.

We keep a full-time, year-round crew to care for our serene cemetery. Even in the lull of winter, we remain dedicated to the highest quality care of our lawns, trees, shrubs and plants.

Contact us, day or night

Both the funeral home and cemetery offer services founded on respect, dependability and integrity. We welcome you to come by for a tour of the cemetery grounds and modern funeral home where you can also meet the friendly funeral home and cemetery teams.

Community events

In addition to the services we provide at the funeral home and cemetery, we also invite the community to join us periodically throughout the year for various events. Every year, we host a Memorial Day program to honor those who have served our country. On Halloween, we host an evening Countdown to Candy event. We also invite the public to attend our Light The Night luminary event during the holiday season. It is our hope that these events will bring a sense of comfort and community to families who are grieving.

History

Mills & Mills began at the turn of the century when William R. Whiteside, an undertaker from St. Louis, Missouri, settled in Olympia, Washington, and built the original facility at what is now 414 S. Franklin St. in 1901. This historic building, except for some slight modifications and remodeling (in 1928, 1954 and 1980), remains mostly in its original form.

In 1906, the Whiteside family moved operations to the then more promising area in Grays Harbor and sold the business to Louis J. Sticklin of Chehalis, Washington. Louis was originally a cabinetmaker and started his 1st funeral home in Morris, Pennsylvania. In 1890, he came to the Pacific Northwest and set up shop in Chehalis. The Sticklin Undertaking Company operated the business until 1915, when it was sold to Jesse T. Mills.

Family passion

Jesse T. Mills was a colorful character in Olympia and served as the city sheriff from 1900 to 1903 and mayor from 1917 to 1920. In 1919, he brought his nephew Arley D. Mills into the business of Mills Funeral Parlors. In the mid-1920s, the uncle-nephew team changed the name to Mills & Mills Funeral Home.

Jesse died in 1943, and Arley brought an old friend, Lawrence O. “L.O.” Swenson, into the business as a partner. This arrangement lasted until Jesse died in 1956 and Lawrence took over as the sole owner of the business. The business was then sold to Dan L. McCaughan in 1963. He held proprietorship until January 1980, when he sold the business to Doug and Barbara Twibell. The business had been known as Mills & Mills Funeral Service. In the following years, the name evolved to Mills & Mills Funeral Directors and later to Mills & Mills Funeral Home.

Standing strong

Aside from necessary updates and repairs, the historic Franklin Street building stood steady and served the needs of our team and client families for many years. On February 28, 2001, a 6.5-magnitude earthquake centered in the Nisqually Delta hit the Olympia area. The building rocked and moved with the rest of downtown Olympia. Unfortunately, the building sustained substantial damage and the business was moved to Olympic Memorial Gardens on Littlerock Road. On September 11, 2005, the new building was dedicated under its current name.