Olympia Time

History, politics, people of Oly WA

Author: Emmett O'Connell (Page 43 of 176)

Earl Newell Steele comes to Olympia, 1903

May 8, 2013 / / 0 Comments
Doan’s Cafe, Olympia, WA 1906 (UW Digital Collections)

From a longer piece I’m working on about E.N. Steele, Olympia lawyer, civic leader, oyster booster and treaty rights activist:

Earl Newell was born outside of Des Moines, Iowa in 1881. After graduating from State University of Iowa, he made a short tour of the west. Once in Olympia, he sat down for a dinner of oysters. That meal sealed Olympia for Newell.

Steele tells the story in his unpublished manuscript, “Letters to Grandpa” about a chance meeting with an old friend and an oyster lunch kept Steele in Olympia:

I again met people from Seattle who strongly advised me to locate in Seattle. Two of my classmates in college had located. But again some thing told me “No, see Olympia first.” So I listened, but I had to change at Centralia to get to Olympia. And that proved to be the most fortunate decision of all. We arrived there about noon. Not knowing where I was going I started toward what appeared to be the business district. I had not gone more than a couple of blocks till I met a young man. We took a good look at each other.

Then he stopped facing each other and he almost shouted at me “Pete Steele, where did you come from?” “Roy MacRenalds, where did you come from?” I then recognized him, for he said “Pete”, and I had not heard that since I left school in Perry, Iowa, We had been friends in school. We had both lost track of the other. After a little chatter he said he was on his way to lunch and asked me to go with him. We went to Doan’s Oyster House. He ordered Doan’s oyster pan roast. As they served it he said, “Pete, after you eat this you will never want to leave Olympia.” He had spoken more than he knew. I had never eaten any thing I enjoyed so much.

So Steele stayed. He started out as a teacher in Tenino, but eventually entered the law practice in Olympia in 1903.

Steele’s love for Olympia is obvious in his writing. He was either a great salesman for Olympia or the rest of his Iowa-based family (four brothers, sister and mom and dad) had tenuous ties to Iowa. Within months of Earl settling in Puget Sound, all seven of them made the trek west to Washington State.


The past and future are right now (Tacoma newspapers and Joint Base Lewis McCord)

May 5, 2013 / / 0 Comments

A Swarner Communications arts and entertainment (and some news) publication folds back into the mothership, as noted by Mathias:

The Weekly Volcano, a alternative newspaper serving the Tacoma, WA and
the greater South Sound, including my little city Olympia, folded this
week.

…

With the growth of the JBLM military base, it’ll be interesting to watch how our area will change over the next few years.

 1. It isn’t all that surprising that Swarner Communications (the owners of the Ranger and the Airlifter) folded the  Volcano back further into their main publications. They made the decision in 2009 to take what was the stand-alone Volcano and revert it back into an insert of their main publications. When the Volcano launched in 2001 as an insert, it was actually the re-branded Tacoma City Paper.

2. And, to say Joint Base Lewis McCord will grow is to be saying something true in 2000. JBLM has grown, and its influence has obviously grown (past tense) in Thurston County.

Just for reference, here’s a map of the 33 minute driving distances from the JBLM main gate, which brings in much of north Thurston County.

Here’s also some old stuff where I point out at least our congressional political world will probably have a lot to do with JBLM politics. Our congressman’s tour of post sequester life focused unsurprisingly on the impacts of federal spending cuts on the military.

But, when it comes to actual numbers, I’m not actually sure if JBLM has made that much of an impact on Thurston County. Here’s my working spreadsheet and charts.

Sure, Thurston County is in the top five of above average counties in terms of percent of military population:

Island 8.13
Kitsap 5.5
Pierce 3.48
Thurston 2.04
Spokane 1.04
Wash. 1.03

And, the Old Navy at the Capital Mall has a large sign announcing special 10 percent off for active duty military families. I’d use those facts and anecdote to say that we are already a military community, at least in part. And, the growth of the military population has been largely consistent, with no real drops since for over two decades.

But, in terms of real number, the military population in Thurston County is so small compared to that of Piece (28,000 to only 5,000). So, maybe I wouldn’t be so brave as to say we’re really a military county, but you’d have to recognize that JBLM’s growth has been happening for a long time.

3. Extra bonus thought: yesterday I was driving through town (after I saw the Welcome Military Families sign at Old Navy) and was thinking of intersections between military folks and typical progressive Olympia folks. I could think of very few on the car ride. But here’s one from Berd (who probably represents one extreme of the equation).

Berd (A story from the Peace Vigil):

I went to look at the fire that had broken out in the area of West Bay Marina, and struck up a conversation with an Army Ranger veteran who had toured Iraq and Afghanistan. 

He was initially quite aggravated and offended by the sign I was carrying, but once I explained in my own words what I thought the sign meant, he was in complete agreement.

May 1, 2000: A look back at my first and only go as an online reporter

May 1, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Thank you, Internet Archive. You Rock.

Olympia Today: May Day Marchers Head to Westside Streets 

I wrote this piece when I was running the above Olympia Time website. At the time, the site was actually owned by a small web design firm that I approached as part of an independent contact at Evergreen. Ah, the independent contract… boy, those were the days.

My idea was to add regular content to a site that was already sort of useful (with a perl weather script and a series of interesting maps) and watch what happened. I think I called the project an online community newspaper.

The run up to May Day 2000 in Olympia was stressful. It would come only five months after the WTO protests paralyzed Seattle and no one knew if these sort of things were rising to some crescendo. In the end, I think it would be remembered as a big and long, if otherwise uneventful and typical Olympia protest. Traffic was tied up, but no lasting impact.

May Day 2000 turned out to be (as I remember it) the high water mark for the site under my control. It was certainly the most interesting day for me and the highest web traffic day too.

My goal was to head over to the west side, watch May Day unfold, take notes and pictures, and then go home and put everything online. My ultimate goal was to beat the Olympian online with a final report, and I think I really did do that.

Obviously, I tried to strike a straight up newsy tone:
Celebrants and protestors marched
this afternoon from the Value Village at Division and Harrison to the corner
of Black Lake and Cooper Point. The marchers took the intersection in what
they call an act against global capitalism.  

I was also more interested in the other people not taking part of the march (like me), but were there to watch in some official capacity:

No local politicians were
recognized, but Olympia’s Police Chief Gary Michel was present, standing
with other senior officers north of the intersection on Black Lake.
 

I love my third person reference, no politicians were recognized, instead of “I didn’t see anyone I recognized.”

I was also fascinated by the media response:

The march attracted
much of the regional media, including Olympia bureau chief for the Seattle
Times David Postman (who also brought a photographer), an AP photographer,
KING 5, KOMO 4, KGY’s Doug Adamson, the Olympian, and helicopters from
KIRO 7 and Fox’s Q13.

KGY was the most active among
the media, interrupting their regular broadcast to bring updates. Adamson
road shotgun on a specially outfitted truck in which he broadcasted updates
and followed the march. The Olympian also did their first midday update
on their website to cover the story.

Doug Adamnson really did do a massive job that day, I mean check him out.

And, I suppose I really didn’t “beat” the Olympian, they did do a midday update. But, it is worth noting that if I read myself right, it was their first midday website update ever. That’s certainly something.

Water, wells (Olyblogosphere for April 28, 2013)

April 28, 2013 / / 0 Comments

1. The most quintessential of Olympia discussions over at /r/Olympia: state office work versus regular office work. Discuss.

2. Wondering what’s up with Make Olympia. Well, that’s what’s up.

3. HA! I feel the same way at Mathias: “…we just had about a dozen cupcake shops open up in the last 24 months.”

4. Oh my God.

5. From Marcus Lane: Water.

6. Jinkies! College students (no Greeners) are all up to hijinks!

7. Makes sense that we’re talking about, but gun ban at SPSCC is controversial.

Tumwater Towers, once you know they’re there, you see them everywhere

April 24, 2013 / / 0 Comments
Where else in Tumwater have copies of this tower spread?

Encouraged (at least in part) by actual City of Tumwater code:

To encourage design elements that convey the historical theme of Tumwater. Pitched or mansard metal roofs, decorative brick facades, and ornamental towers with pitched roofs and decorative cornices are examples of design elements that reflect the history of Tumwater. Several of these elements are incorporated into the designs of civic and commercial buildings along Israel Road, including Tumwater City Hall, Tumwater Headquarters Fire Station and the Tumwater Timberland Library.

Right nearby the actual brewery, for one.

 


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A sort of not-obvious one, but one that got me thinking:


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Another one, down the street:


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The ordinance above actually lists a few examples of public buildings, so I’m just going to skip those ones and look for some other examples that might not be so obvious.

Do you think this qualifies? I’m almost sure I’ve seen this chain of hotels with a similar design.


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Kind of an easy one, really:


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Olympia Beer, looking at a budget Puget Sound culture from Los Angeles

April 21, 2013 / / 0 Comments

The headquarters of the Olympia Brewing Company, literally on Santa Monica Boulevard.

 


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Just a bit different than the original headquarters.

Since the 1980s, the Olympia Beer brand has been passed around several national beer companies, landing with Pabst in 1999. By the time Pabst bought Olympia, it was already a virtual brewer. A maker of beer in name only, or simply a company that owned the intellectual property of branding and making beer, and not the means of brewing itself.

That year was the same year that Olympia the beer was separated from Olympia the brewery, as the building was passed to SABMiller. That outfit ended up closing up shop in Tumwater in 2004.

So, the idea of “Olympia Beer,” “It’s the Water” (which still weighs pretty heavy around here) is owned out of Los Angeles and is likely controlled by some sunny Southern California creative firm. So, what does that mean?

Actually, does anyone want to be the brand manager at Pabst? Looks like they’re hiring.

Well, when they try something new, they kind of get it wrong.

Back in 2010, Pabst launched a sort of rebrand of Olympia Beer. The cans went retro (which only just satisfied the hipsters in Seattle) and the attitude of the brand itself seemed to move to some sort of grittier version of hipster PBR.

And, I’ll be honest. I’m confused by this Sasquatch (Bigfoot) contest. It seems to have satisfied the minimum requirements of a beer brand game, it got attention with minimal effort by giving a large reward for something that will never happen. It also seems to tap into the sporting nature of drinkers, but I’m not really getting a good idea of how much participation they’re getting. Really, most of the “sightings” on their map seem oddly fake.

This guy I think says it best, though.

Also, to me, Bigfoot is what people from outside the Northwest call Sasquatch. Which absolutely makes sense.

What I left unsaid about baseball, ambition and community

April 17, 2013 / / 0 Comments



I recently submitted a rough outline of Olympia’s minor league baseball history to the local historical society newsletter. It was based on a longer piece that I really hadn’t put finishing touches on, so I took out some thoughts that strayed off the historically cite-able path. They were mostly thoughts on the communities that made up the well defunct Southwest Washington League.

Here’s the piece in the Olympia Historical Society Newsletter: Olympia in Minor League Baseball.

Here are my extended editorial thoughts, in rough form:

(League organizer John P.) Fink first reached out to organizers of local teams in the timber towns early in 1903, asking them if their communities had it in them to step up to professional baseball. First on his list were Olympia, Chehalis, Centralia, Montesano, Aberdeen and Hoquiam. 

These six cities were at the time very similar. Today, they stand apart culturally and demographically, Olympia in particular. In more than a century, Olympia has gone from a timber town in the same classification as Aberdeen and Chehalis (with a state capitol) to a city on the southern edge of the Puget Sound metroplex. Olympia grew from just under 4,000 to more than 10 times that size. Today, you can put Olympia together with neighboring Lacey and Tumwater and get more than 100,000 people living in and around Olympia. This is more people in either of the individual county’s that also made up the Southwest Washington League in 1903.

The 1903 cities of the old league almost seems like ghosts now. Olympia has grown outside its 1903 version, practically leaving nothing behind of its former self. The other cities have grown, seeing high times after World War II. Through the 1930s and World War II Olympia lagged behind cities like Aberdeen and Hoquiam. It wasn’t until 1960 that Olympia was the largest in population. It was the 1980s that Olympia started putting real distance between itself and its former league-mates.

While state government grew and Olympia took advantage of its connection to the urban centers of Washington, the other cities in the old Southwest League suffered from the decline of the timber and other resource industries.

Olympia became even more distant as it got more liberal relative to its neighbors. Being the home of state government and the politically and culturally liberal Evergreen State College, the old Southwest League towns turn their ire at Olympia. The infamous “Uncle Sam” highway billboard in Chehalis has included many anti-Olympia messages over the years, including “Evergreen State College – Home of Environmental Terrorists and Homos?”

But, as Fink sent out his inquiries in early 1903, these really were cities of the same league.

Views and shorelines (olyblogosphere for April 15, 2013)

April 16, 2013 / / 0 Comments
1. Not really from the blogosphere, but I’m not sure if anyone else has pointed to the really interesting videos the city posted from their shoreline discussions. These are two visualizations side by side of what certain regulations would look like in terms of actual buildings.

2. Speaking of views, both Stevenl (at Morty and Olyblog) and CIAguy have been sharing historic views of the Capitol from various vantages and vintages.

3. Mojourner Truth blogs about the impacts of the coal port in the future of the northwest in someone’s community:

I’ve never lived by a coal port, and Olympia is too small to be in the race. But I do drive Route 14 up the Columbia from time to time, I have tried to sleep in Stevenson as the plains rumble through, horns blasting, and it’s hard to imagine how a massive increase in traffic would be tolerable.
…
If a coal port happens–and the relentlessness of North American capital suggests it will–the lucky winner will likely learn some hard lessons. Many of the construction jobs will go to outsiders, and operations won’t generate the employment or revenue expected. At Cherry Point, we’ve already learned that the proponents’ initial statements about the volume were a fraction of what they really plan, that there will be twice as much traffic and pollution. Friendly promises will be reneged. Coal, being a global commodity, may become more profitable (leading to increased shipping), or the bottom may drop out (causing jobs to disappear from time to time). Even if you support coal power, does it make sense to sell our reserves to China, whose import policy is partly to protect their own for the future?

Welcome to Olympia! (Olyblogosphere for March 14, 2013)

March 14, 2013 / / 0 Comments

1. This guy moved to Olympia. He seems happy about his choice, and well, he seems like an interesting fellow.

2. Over at GriffinNeighbors (which is outside Olympia, but might as well be a moon if Olympia was a planet) there’s a story about social capital, creative commons and stickers.

3. While not technically a blog or anything, its worth noting that KGY is posting some of their content over at Soundcloud. I haven’t listened to KGY is years, mostly because if I am listening to radio, I’m listening to some sort of NPR. Otherwise, I’m listening to podcasts. And, because I was able to turn their Soundcloud page into a nice handy podcast feed, I’m listening to KGY again!

Just one thing, one of the guys on their sports show needs to stop laughing so much. Super annoying.

4. The Fake News thing is present at Evergreen.

5. And, sadly, it’s worth noting that Everyday Olympia is going into hibernation again. I really loved the original version, which seemed to be building towards a cleaner version of Olyblog or a different version of Thurston Talk.

Beautiful Olympia sea level rise design

March 14, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Sea level rise has been a doing discussion in Olympia for the last few years, and to this point, we seem pretty clear on the implications. At some point, the last century of working towards reaching towards the deep water will be reversed in Olympia. Much of Olympia’s history has been defined by expanding our shorelines, slowly replacing 4,000 foot long wharf with dry land.

A map of map of sea level rise implications in Olympia…

Looks a lot like a historic map of our shorelines:



The most facinating thing I’ve read about the future/past of Olympia’s shorelines has been a master’s thesis from a student in California. It really is a beautiful thing.

The thesis by Brenda Lorene Snyder in urban design at University of California, Berkeley is fascinating.

Snyder does a great job laying out the natural and built history of Olympia and Puget Sound. But, the meat of the thesis, the picture of Olympia after a century of sea-level rise starts here.

Off the top, she assumes the restoration of the Deschutes River estuary. Despite some city maps that imply saving the lake, her vision simply allows for an open estuary with little if any discussion.

Here is Snyder’s map of post sea level rise Olympia:

I’d suggest reading the entire thing, there are more than a few beautiful nuances to appreciate. Here are a two of my favorites though:

  • Aqua blocks. Snynder proposes creeks running through several current alley ways to deal with stormwater runnoff.
  • Replacing the historic long warf with an extended Capitol Way with artisan structures over water.
She also gives a walking tour of the new Olympia downtown:

After perusing Creek Street we turn right onto Legion Way SE, headed towards Olympia’s historic town square, Sylvester Park. Significant growth has occurred within the downtown neighborhood over the past decades and Olympia has been able to manage this growth to its own benefi t. Strategic infill has strengthened the continuity of its human scale walk-able blocks. Through thoughtful design and attentiveness to the scale and style of historic structures Olympia has been able to maintain and strengthen the character of livability it’s become known for – a cozy yet lively village tucked away along the shores of the Puget Sound.

Despite the birds eye view seeming like this is a proposal to walk back from the impacts of nature, the closer in look shows a much more balances approach. She does propose a long berm (hidden as a new urban street) to protect downtown blocks. But, at the same time, she proposes using urban design techniques to provide clean water. She also protects our deepwater port.
But, this certainly isn’t slapping up bare earth berms and hard walls to protect the blocks we have now.
This may not be exactly what we end up doing, but this is the kind of beautiful urban design we need to approach the hard questions we’ll have to answer in the next century. We have to be able to see the solutions before we make them happen.
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