It Happened Here

It Happened Here is an installation of images that document the various people and groups who used the land and buildings located at State Avenue and Capitol Way, downtown Olympia. It is located in the windows of the 1912 City Hall/ Fire Station that face State Avenue. The project was initiated by the Olympia Arts & Heritage Alliance and funded, in part, by the Downtown Olympia Alliance.

This webpage offers information what the images incorporated into It Happened Here depict. It also documents other events and people connected with this site throughout history.

Native People were the first residents of Olympia. According to the Squaxin Island Tribe, “The old Squaxin village Steh-Chass is in present day Olympia. Another Squaxin ancestral site in the vicinity of Steh-Chass was called bəsčətxwəd, a Lushootseed name, meaning ‘frequented by Black Bears.’”  Native people did not go away after the first Euro-American settlement in Olympia in the 1840s but continued to be part of the community as they are today.

For more information about the Squaxin Island tribe and culture see:  https://squaxinislandmuseum.org.

In the 1840s, early Euro-American Olympia settler Levi Smith had a cabin in the area. He recorded information such as the number of canoes in the inlet and interactions with Native Americans, including trading. An early name for Olympia was “Smithfield” or “Smithster,” which combined Smith’s name and Edmund Sylvester’s name, another early settler. Some record the peninsula as “Cheet Woot”- a rendezvous point where Native people dried and stored shellfish. Other settlers followed and by 1850 they named the area “Olympia.”

To read Levi Smith’s diary see:  https://olympiahistory.org/tannis-levi-lathrop-smith/ Levi Lathrop Smith Diary. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Isaac Stevens, first Territorial Governor, with his wife Margaret and family, also lived nearby. Just down the street the first legislative meeting for the newly designated Washington Territory took place in 1854, near hotels and businesses.  Likely, by the 1870s a livery stable was at this site, which was convenient to Percival Dock, later street car lines and main roads.

Olympia’s fire department is often recognized as one of the first fire departments in Washington Territory, although originally Olympia’s fire services were known as “clubs.” Barnes Hook & Ladder, Columbia Fire Companies and the “Squilgees” all operated locally before becoming part of City government in 1902. An early fire station was located on Columbia Street. Later, in the 1860s, a City Hall and Fire Station were built on 4th Avenue and known as “Columbia Hall.”

A significant early 20th century project was the “Carlyon Fill,” a large-scale dredging and filling around the Olympia peninsula that deepened the harbor channel and created more industrial land. 

After the turn of the 20th century, the city decided to build a new city hall and fire station. They erected a fine building at an important downtown corner near the Carlyon fill (now State Avenue and Capitol Way) and in proximity to the many lumber mills in the area, as well as Percival Dock. The 1912 building originally housed city offices, the fire department, the Chamber of Commerce, the city police and the town library, which was donated by the Woman’s Club of Olympia. The Carnegie Library was not built until 1914.