There are countless wild wonders in Olympia’s 19.69 square miles — rolling hills, bubbling artesian springs, and beaches of gravel, sand, and mud — but much of this beauty is out of reach, encaged on private land.
However, 8% of the city is a public park. In these several thousand acres, rich and poor enjoy equal access to the sweet perfume of flowers, the sound of wind rustling through trees, and the gentle caress of tides, rivers, and lakes.
Priest Point Park has been renamed Squaxin Park, but the pointy point of Olympia’s largest park is still called Priest. Pointedly, the land was purchased by the city in 1905. Before that, it had been the site of a Catholic mission run by Oblate “priests” where Squaxin natives were invited (coerced) to work (accept Jesus) on their farm (brainwashery).
During World War II there were several cannons installed atop Priest Point to defend the city from a Japanese naval invasion. The city retains the cannons as part of its municipal arsenal at a storage facility near Steilacoom.
In the early years of the park, there was a primitive zoo built and managed by teenage zookeepers. It was a menagerie of wooden pens that housed locally-trapped deer, raccoons, possums, squirrels, seagulls, crows, red-breasted robins, and a family of harbor rats.
Letters in The Daily Olympian about needless cruelty at the zoo start as early as 1916. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the arrival of a large bear. In the end, all of the animals, including the bear, were cooked (or escaped) when the zoo caught fire (or was arsoned) in the mid-1950s. No one at the city could say what really happened, although parks staff told me, “This could have been a thing that was brushed under the rug back in those days.”
The remains of the zoo were cleared. In its place, a small wooden building was built as an ice cream stand. Only three years passed before this too burned down. It was replaced by an unburnable children’s wading pool. In 1996, the pool was demolished by jackhammers.
The former zoo-ice cream-pool site became the location for Olympia’s outdoor summer Shakespeare festival. As a memorial to the blaze that destroyed the zoo, the troupe that puts on the plays calls themselves Animal Fire Productions.
Harry Fains
No one knows anything about the life of Harry Fains. There was a period when all his park had was a single wooden seesaw. Today, with the addition of expanded playground equipment, there has been a gain, but also a kind of loss. The single seesaw had a minimalist elegance.
Burfoot Park got its name from the Burfoot family who used to own the property. The family had shoes and didn’t have problems stepping on thistles, thorns or burrs of any kind. Each year a handful of visitors leave the park without severe rashes from forest plants. The central meadow is a good site for Capture The Flag.
In 1961, G-rated movie maven Art Zabel purchased a small hazelnut orchard near San Francisco Street. Over the next decade he converted the property into a 3-acre rhododendron gallery featuring common and rare specimens of Washington’s state flower. In 2015 the property was named Springwood after being acquired by the city. It continues to draw thousands of state flower buffs.
In 1926, the Chehalis Western Railroad Company laid a path for what is today Olympia’s 23-mile north-south bicycle mega-highway. At the north end of The CWT is Woodard Bay, an 870-acre wilderness preserve that boasts the state record for most blue heron rookeries. There are also a lot of bats. At the south end of the CWT, one can connect with another former railroad turned bike path. The 14-mile Tenino-Yelm Railway was first built in 1869, one of the earliest in the state.
The letters of LBA Park stand for Little Baseball Association, an Olympia-based baseball arranger. Contrary to a common misunderstanding, the “little” in the name refers to youth, not size. The Olympia LBA has nothing to do with Eddie Gaedel or collectible baseball figurines. The LBA is a medium-sized group that donated the large piece of land in 1974.
There was a controversy over logging the forests bordering LBA Park to make way for a densely-laid mini-mansion townhouse maxi-development. Opponents of the logging plan were frustrated that the name of the park didn’t inspire more sympathy and spent time explaining that the park has nothing to do with Lyndon B. Johnson. Forest advocates begged the city long enough that eventually the city shelled out $5 million and bought the 74 acres from the developer.
Watershed Park was also once slated to be clear-cut. In 1955, the issue went all the way to the state supreme court. These 150 acres were home to Olympia’s first waterworks. Antique rusted ruins are still visible among the skunk cabbage and big leaf maples.
West Central Park also began after neighborhood opposition to commercial development. A wealthy resident (unwilling to let the fourth corner of Harrison and Division fall to an ever-expanding retail wasteland) bought the corner parcel outright. It was declared “a privately-owned public park.” Cement road barricades were painted to look like bricks, then repainted to look like graffiti. There’s an off-limits area where a security bird is perched on a special pallet. If you love automobile noise or air pollution, this park is an ideal picnic site.
Several times a year, during peak rainfall (September to May), Yauger Park changes its unofficial name to Yauger Lake. At these times, wetlands enthusiasts can take a romantic canoe trip across nine baseball diamonds submerged under 5 feet of storm discharge to a timer switch located in the middle of the lake. Flipping on a hundred high-watt halogens creates an electric summer in February.
In the 1980s, Grass Lake Park was purchased by the city in a marathon political battle involving city staff, neighborhood groups, developers and certain city council members. The story of how it all went down got so dense that I lost consciousness while reading its 211-page history. The city has posted an online spread sheet listing all 300 plant species identified at the park. The list does not include grass.
The Garfield Nature Trail is a greenbelt mini-jungle. It’s home to a very strange thing. About halfway down the path, about halfway up the tree line, nature enthusiasts and bird watchers pass under a suspended sewer, a pipe balanced on medieval gallows. During peak bath and shower hours, this greenish pipe drips greenish wastewater. Aside from stilted septics, this little wilderness offers a pedestrian short-cut Zen space, a break from Westside worries and Harrison hill headaches.
The Garfield Nature Trail ends at the mouth of one of Olympia’s ugliest parks. What West Bay Park lacks in appearance, it makes up for in views. This is a great place to appreciate Mount Rainier, Budd Inlet, the port, and the downtown skyline. This used to be an industrial area and sawmill. The Rotarians had a role in the concrete esplanade. The cement is pre-defaced with the embossed names of some famous ones. Recently, the city tested a drone show here as a bird-friendly alternative to fireworks, but complaints from bat advocates have largely closed the door on future ones. Bats hold all the power.
Instead of ending this tour at a former industrial wasteland, let’s make our way south following the old train tracks to an active one. One of the best ways to get to know Olympia is to spend time at The Mottman Industrial Park.
George Mottman installed Olympia’s first elevator and started the municipal water system. Today at his park, you’ll find thousands of blue-collar late-night clock zombies in dozens of medium-sized factories making all manner of materialisimo. Many of these plants operate two or more shifts, which keeps the area humming around the clock. There are hundreds of places like this all over the country, but in Olympia there’s a special factory that squirts out corrugated black plastic drainage pipes, another one blows spinning molten polyethylene cylinders into 1- and 2-liter soda bottles, there’s a plant that makes steel cranes and one that makes fake bricks. I’ve been employed at almost all of these. Mottman is home to the state’s largest dog food-processing plant, but I never worked there.
David Scherer Water explores absurdity in local culture through the lens of comedic nonfiction. He is the author of a history book and this column. Both have the same title. Discover more of his work here.
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Sandig
Harry Fain was my Aunt Eve Cole's father. The park is part of the original land he (or his parents) owned going back to the 1920s or before. There is a book/memoir in the State Library written by Aunt Eva which tells some of his story. The park land was donated to the City of Olympia by Aunt Eva. Sandi Gray
Friday, May 30 Report this
CPWINOLY
Nice article. Some trivia regarding Grass Lake. Most people think that the lake bordering Kaiser road and identified on maps is Grass Lake, but this is actually Lake Louise, an artificial drainage pond created when the site was originally sited for development. The actually Grass Lake is more of a swamp, but with recent improvements to the park, one can now access the real Grass Lake on a new trail with a nice bridge. It connects the park with a trail that runs north and south all the way to Harrison Ave. Olympia also has a number of small pocket parks in neighborhoods. Don't forget Bigelow park on the Eastside and Decatur Woods park on the west side. Burri and Sunrise are another couple of hidden gems on the west side.
Tuesday, June 3 Report this
Porter
Thank you. Wonderful read.
Tuesday, June 3 Report this