History, politics, people of Oly WA
When you walk into Tumwater Falls Park, the Olympia Tumwater Foundation office is on your left and the WDFW hatchery facility on your right, directly ahead of you is the uppermost falls in the park. Google Maps marks it as a waterfall. Of course it does. Any water falling over a ledge looks like a [ ]
Somebody in the Daily Olympian newsroom set the type for a headline on election night in 1896 that would have sounded impossible two years earlier. Fusionists Get It All. Every county office in Thurston County, captured by a coalition of Populists, Democrats, and Silver Republicans, three factions that had spent most of the decade distrusting [ ]
Maytown was flooded before it had a name. Around 16,500 years ago an ice dam gave way, releasing a wall of meltwater that tore south across what would become southern Thurston County. This was the Tanwax Flood, one of the last violent acts of the Vashon Stade, and it did more than carve the ground. [ ]
A few weeks back I wrote about a version of Olympia and Thurston County that kept its streetcars, tied them into regional rail, and grew up into something closer to a Pacific Northwest urbanist s dream. Fun as a distraction, that essay gave me a chance to chase some historical what-ifs toward the best possible outcome. [ ]
For the first time in over fifty years, more people in Thurston County live inside a city than outside one. It could be an urbanist success story, zoning reform finally winning out, transit investment tipping the scale toward density. It isn t. The real story s older, weirder, and a lot less democratic. Once you see how [ ]
Washington spent thirty-six years as a territory before Congress finally granted statehood in 1889. This in-between space lasted longer than almost any other territory in the country, and that wasn t an accident. Robert Ficken makes the case in Washington Territory: for most of those thirty-six years, the place didn t function as one territory at all. [ ]
Last week, when I wrote about the sale of the South Sound Center by Bob Blume s family to a real estate developer quietly closed a chapter for a region whose very geography Blume had shaped through his mid-century ambitions. He s often called the Father of Lacey, and the title fits: he was the son of [ ]
When Bob Blume wanted to build a shopping center on rural land east of Olympia, he knew he d have to give something away. The interstate had already cut through from Olympia up to Tacoma, and the era of car-based, off-the-cloverleaf retail was here. There was no city off the Sleater-Kinney exit to support a large-scale [ ]
I had a busy week this week, so I am going to do something different. I am going to give you a poem I wrote that will be part of a collection I release at the end of the year. Speaking of which, you can buy my collection from last year for $5. Dead Space [ ]
There s a version of Olympia where you step off the commuter train at 7th Avenue and walk up into daylight at what was an old Greyhound station. You re already downtown. You wait four minutes for a streetcar, and then 20 minutes later, you re home. That city was closer to real than you d think. What killed [ ]