Author: Emmett O'Connell (Page 55 of 176)

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 freeway. When you head north on Deschutes Way from Boston Street, you’re going through the old downtown. But, there is nothing to really tell you that, even though a lot of the historic buildings were replaced by a flat grade on the edge of the Olympia Tumwater Foundation’s Falls Park and the open flatness of the city’s Historic Park.

Having some context of what was actually there, giving physical dimension to what is now open fields and cyclone fence, I think would be important. I’m certainly not suggesting rebuilding the historic town.

This isn’t the first historic collection of buildings that have disappeared and replaced by open area.

I would suggest something like this:

Franklin Court:

Franklin Court is the site on which the home of Benjamin Franklin once stood. Franklin resided with his family in smaller row houses in the neighborhood prior to living here.

… 

Since archaeologists have no exact plans of the original house, a simple frame in girders indicates its dimensions and those of the smaller print shop. Excavations have uncovered wall foundations, bits of walls, and outdoor privy wells, and these have been left as protected cutaway pits. It is all very interesting, but enter the exhibition for the really fun part. After a portrait and furniture gallery, a mirrored room reveals Franklin’s far-ranging interests as a scientist, an inventor, a statesman, a printer, and so on. At the Franklin Exchange, dial various American and European luminaries to hear what they thought of Franklin.

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.” She points out that before 1936 the main drag through Tumwater dog legged through the old downtown Tumwater. After the current Capitol Way was finished in 1938, it bypassed the old downtown, leading to the creation of the commerical area down at Capitol Way and Trosper Road.

The red on the map below illustrates the new bypass, the blue, the old dog-leg road.

Going from crossing the Deschutes on a low bridge over waterfalls, the main road through Tumwater now crossed the Deschutes at a much wider point (a more than 1,000 foot span) over what is now the old (but then new) Tumwater brewery.

For over a decade before Interstate 5 uprooted the blocks old downtown Tumwater, the city was already abandoning its water-falls based history and moving south.

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 industries directly to the saltwater.

The Union Pacific line (while it did connect through a branch down to the old Olympia brewery site then on saltwater) is certainly new Tumwater. And, through ownership changes in the early 1900s, both lines became owned by the same company (Union Pacific) and the latter replaced the former in connecting Tumwater to the Olympia waterfront.

In geography, here’s the difference between the two lines. The Port Townsend line ran through west side of what is now the Tumwater Falls Park. Much of the current trail is actually the old rail road grade. It continued down the west side of the Deschutes River (now Capitol Lake) until reaching saltwater near where Tugboat Annies is now.

You can see the Olympia terminus of the Port Townsend line in the famous Olympia birds eye (from UW Digital Collections).

You can see some of the Tumwater stretch in this picture from the Washington Historical Society.

While the Port Townsend Line sunset in 1916, the Union Pacific (former Olympia Terminal Line) was being completed just a year earlier. This is the current line when you think of the Olympia Brewery. Going down Custer Way, this is the line you cross over. The one obstacle that the road had to face to get from up on the east bluff to downtown Olympia and the waterfront was the bluff itself. The solution was a tunnel under Capitol Boulevard.

You can kind of see the railroad tunnel to the left (we’re looking south back into Tumwater).

View Larger Map

What’s interesting to me is that while the new railroad, the railroad that started drawing Tumwater up and away from the river, seems so tiny compared to I-5. While tunneling under Capitol Way created a nice short cut for the railroad, it pales in comparison to the obliteration of the same hillside by I-5 just decades later.

All references in this post come from two wonderful books by James Hannum, that I wrote about here.

Here’s another view of the old main road between Olympia and Tumwater that is now just a back street in South Capitol.

“Long Bridge taken from the Olympia-Tumwater Trail looking northwest” From UW Digital Collection.