Thies is Senegal's third largest city, about 72 kilometers east of Dakar and a major railway junction, serving as capital of Thies Region. The French established a military post there in 1864 and made it a commune in 1904, and it grew in importance when the Dakar-Saint-Louis railway, French West Africa's first rail line, opened a stop there in 1885, with Leopold Sedar Senghor, later Senegal's first president, elected the city's mayor in 1956. Its 2023 population was 391,253. Thies is known for a tapestry factory established in 1966 that produces work by leading Senegalese artists, and it serves as an industrial and agricultural trading center for phosphate, livestock, rice, peanuts and millet.
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