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Olympia, Washington:
“Far From the Madding Crowd” By Nancy & Eric Anderson Photography by Authors
The state, frugal and green long before others, may be ahead in the glass ceiling of politics as well. Forty two steps lead up the Capitol, so arranged because Washington was the 42nd state to enter the Union. It also is the first to have a female governor and two female senators serving at the same time. Maybe that’s why the state seems penny-wise and thrifty; it costs only around $30 annually to basically register a car, any car. You won’t need a car much in Olympia but you’ll want stout walking shoes: the sidewalks are in terrible shape in the downtown area. Making up for that are the wild, ubiquitous murals scattered around the side streets off Capital Way, the main drag in town. Some show civic pride and affection such as the wall backing Gardner’s restaurant beside the Phoenix Inn Suites up near the Farmer’s Market.
As you walk around notice how friendly they are to visitors and to each other. This is a town for locals as much as tourists. Enthusiastic tourists, some 300,000, come every year to check out the Capitol Building -- the fourth highest masonry dome in the world and the highest in the Americas. “More than ninety percent of downtown businesses are family-owned,” says Heather Antanaitis, spokesperson for the Olympia, Lacey Tumwater Visitor & Convention Bureau. “We are what we are because American events have passed us by. The city initially had a unique history. We were once the major port for Washington in the steamship era but when that era ended we lost our maritime status. Then came the rail roads; we got bypassed by history again, we weren’t even give us a stop on the line and that essentially put Olympia out of business. The Interstates, of course, changed America; that could have been our salvation but we were, to a degree, bypassed by the freeways as well. In a way all this left Olympia in a time lock.” It should happen to more tourist destinations. It has made Olympia a downtown delight. the northern part of Capital Way is fun and funky; the southern part closer to the Capitol takes itself just a little bit more seriously. Around Percival Landing, a board walk facing Bud Bay, you can meet locals showing Southern California doesn’t have an exclusive hold on campy characters. We have just passed, for example, a tall, thin man in colorful but vagrant-like clothes wandering by with a contented black cat wrapped around his neck like a scarf. And here are three members of the Olympia Marching Band sitting on a bench waiting for the ten or so others so they can, well, start marching.
July Kelen, dressed in a psychedelic dress and black and white long stockings with a tiara and her xylophone, smiles at us. Asked about music, she says, “Music forms my life from within.” Adds Margi Carlson, like her husband a retired school teacher, “Music has always been a major fine gold thread in my life.” Husband Mike Carlson is asked why he enjoys music. He grins and says, “It just feel good!” The Olympians are friendly and in the restaurant Bud Bay Café, with the best seafood we’ve ever had, we noticed diners leaving not only waving goodbye to friends still eating at all the tables but saying goodnight to some of the servers also. This seems to be a family town. But they are more than friendly, they are the epitome of green, back to nature living. The Farmer’s Market has some of the most gorgeous fruit and vegetables we’ve ever seen – and a few pretty girls. Here’s young Lucy Danforth selling cherries at the stall of Michael Kinnick’s “The Fresh Approach.” She’s selling products that are fresh from the east part of the state. How fresh is the fresh approach? we ask Michael. “Four days off the trees,” he says. “Some of our contacts have been in the business for 100 years and my family has been doing this for more than 30 years.” We ask Lucy if she is part of the family but some of the young men at the stands answer for us and say, “Not yet!”
There’s a lot to please young people in Olympia especially for those really young, namely the Hands On Children’s Museum. The museum allows all children to enter even if the family can’t afford admission. In contrast to some museums that don’t seem to understand the mystique of childhood, this one encourages kids to explore and experiment with all the stuff around from mechanical challenges like repairing a truck to working in the kitchen to bake a cake. We sure didn’t hear any child whine “I’m bored!” Says Stephanie Takase, the front desk supervisor, “its fun for us to see the children come in and figure out what they’re going to do. Every child has a different experience.”
Ok. So what are the experiences for visitors coming to Olympia? Well, the Olympia, Lacey Tumwater Visitor & Convention Bureau can be found about eight long bleak blocks east of the downtown area, close enough t o Interstate 5 for tourists go there first before they check into their hotel. There’s a visitor center someplace down town but we never found it. A walking map can be provided by your hotel and one may be available to explore the 90 pieces of art on show around the city. Well worth a visit if you are in your car at the weekend is the Bigelow House now a historical museum open Saturdays and Sundays and manned by volunteer docents like Karen Johnson. Four generations of Bigelow lived in the house from 1860 to 2005, she says, and the house contains the original furniture because the Bigelows were all pack rats. “When Daniel Bigelow, a lawyer, came to the Washington Territory there were few men and few educated persons so he found himself wearing many hats,” Karen says. To get to his office, Bigelow walked down a hillside and paddled a canoe to his office. In one of the rooms sits the walnut desk with a local Douglas Fir base on which he wrote the First Constitution of the Washington Territory in November 1889. His desk came in a covered wagon but the three organs and the square grand Steinway came around Cape Horn in 1871. His wife, Ann Elizabeth White, had arrived in Olympia on the Oregon Trail at the age of 15. She had been educated and therefore was quickly made the local school teacher. She lost her job a year or two later when she married Daniel, possibly an interesting table conversation subject considering they entertained Susan B. Anthony in their home in October 1871. You need a car to reach the Bigelow House but all the other attractions are walkable. A walk shows Olympia’s history and its changes. For example, a tall column rises in front of what was the old Capitol building. It commemorates John Rankin Stevens, the first Territorial Governor. He arrived for his post after a long tiring journey and found his way to the only hotel in town which was, incidentally, preparing a banquet for its first governor. Unaware this was planned, disheveled and tired he asked if he could get a meal and was brusquely told, “No, we are getting ready for someone important!”
The statue is somewhat formal but showing how tastes change and how laidback Olympians now are is the statue, a mere 200 yards away, “The Kiss,” 1990 by Richard Beyer. Similarly illustrating how the public changes are the kayakers in the Capitol Pool enjoying the great outdoors that Washington has long respected and preserved. They kayak indifferently in the shadow of the Capitol, the building whose magnificent dome still fascinates visitors. Money Matters Olympia has a free shuttle that takes locals and visitors around the Capital Way downtown area. Washingtonians are proud of their coffee making skills and there is an abundance of small inexpensive cafes. We found the Bud Bay Café a great place to eat seafood (our dinner cost us $59) and for a deli lunch nothing was better than Wagner’s European Bakery where lunch for two ending with its famous carrot cake sprung us for only $19. Hotels vary from Motel 6s on the outskirts of the city to the upscale Phoenix Inn Suites at the top of Capital Way. It was built in 2000 next to several restaurants and across the street from the Farmer’s Market. It’s not inexpensive but parking and breakfast is free, coffee makers are in each suite, WiFi is simple and complimentary, and the staff is attentive. Midweek rates varied from $129 to $149 in mid June when we were there. Asked what makes Olympia special, Jeff Rose, its sales administrator, says, “We have, of course, the Capitol with its history and architecture one mile from here – and the shuttle runs every 15 minutes; there are parks and trails within the city such as Priest Point Park, and our Hands On Children’s Museum is so popular it has to expand. “We have a good highway system, easy parking in town, a national park as a day’s trip, two volcanoes in an hour’s drive, the boating and fishing of the Puget Sound at our very doorstep and the Pacific Ocean within 90 minutes.” He grins and adds, “What’s not to like?” |
t’s Small Town America, a little place with a big heart – and a pretentious
name, Olympia, a title surely reserved by the Gods. The name is the
only affection in this part of the Puget Sound. Olympia, population
roughly 40,000, does not give itself airs even though it is Washington
State’s capital. This is country living and the locals seem contented.
With reason: a lot of what Washington and Olympia think important
and the policies they have followed for years are now being embraced
by the nation. 
Tell Eric what you think of his article. In the meantime, here are some of the feedback we have already received:
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