During the snow storm last week, someone (not the city) put up olyroads.com and olympiaroads.com, which showed weather related road closures across town. It seems to be a simple trick of pulling information from olympiawa.gov and republishing it on a mobile friendly website, but its interesting enough. Aside from calling it the wrong thing (its…
Month: February 2011
2011 Northwest Book Mission: On second thought with The Big Burn
Me over on Goodreads: What struck me most about this book was the discussion of the political debate at the time. This will sound as more naive than I am, but nothing has changed in terms of how political debate happens. Towards the end of the book, Egan points out that Pinchot understands how events…
There’s something going on here (people writing about Olympia)
After awhile of the Olympian shrinking and Olyblog be-bopping along after a couple of pretty good years, there are a few things worth noting about people writing about Olympia. 1. Everyday Olympia is back. More centered now just Mathias, it is back at least. I’m sad all of the old content is disappeared, but at least the site…
Context to the old Tumwater downtown
My problem with the historic sites (Crosby House and the Henderson House) in the old downtown Tumwater is that they have no context. Whatever else was there before Capitol Way sucked the life out of it and I-5 buried it has been stripped away and replaced with newer roadsides, grades, landscaping and a big massive…
Now, here’s the big secret: Capitol Way killed Tumwater’s downtown, not I-5
I-5 may have come along later to bury Tumwater’s historic downtown, but by the time it got there, Capitol Way had already stuck the knife in. The best history of this, actually what got me started on this entire line of thinking, is Shanna Stevenson’s chapter “A Freeway Runs Through It” in “The River Remembers.”…
Tumwater’s next roads (railroads)
The next two roads in Tumwater that really interest me are the railroads. The Olympia Tenino/Port Townsend Southern Railroad and the Olympia Terminal/Union Pacific and the transition between the two show how roads changed Tumwater and how they changed the focus of Tumwater. The Port Towsend line ran through old rive focussed Tumwater, connecting its…