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Just a muddy little logging community when picked
as Washington's territorial capital in 1853, OLYMPIA
has never really become the metropolis its founders had hoped,
instead continuing to remain somewhat a backwater locale despite
government efforts to spruce it up. Its downtown area is small,
with a few blocks of stores and restaurants presided over by the
neo-Romanesque Old Capitol at Seventh Avenue
between Washington and Franklin, home mainly to bureaucratic offices.
Nevertheless, it's quite a busy little town, with state employees
knocking around during the day and students from the Evergreen
State College, a popular liberal arts school, pepping up the nightlife.
There's a well-established Farmers' Market downtown
at 401 N Capitol Way (AprilDec weekends, and occasional weekdays;
www.farmers-market.org ), north of which is a boardwalk with some
decent places to eat .
The state offices are arranged around neat lawns
on the Capitol Campus , just south of downtown.
It's worth taking a tour of the imposing neoclassical
Legislative Building (daily 10am3pm; free; www.ga.wa.gov/visitor
) completed in 1928 after more than three decades of work, if
only to wonder at the sheer energy of the pioneers who set out
to construct a close replica of the Capitol building in Washington,
DC, in what was then a backwoods on the far side of the continent.
Eight blocks south, the small State Capitol Museum
, 211 W 21st Ave (TuesSun 10am4pm, weekends opens at noon; $2;
www.wshs.org/wscm ), juxtaposes a restored dining room with displays
of Native American basketwork and local natural history.
A short drive south of Olympia, tiny TUMWATER
was Washington's first pioneer community, settled in
1845 by a group that included Bing Crosby's grandparents. Its
name comes from the tumbling water of the Deschutes River, which
is still used at the Olympia Brewery , Schmidt
Place and Custer Way off I-5 exit 103 (tours MonSat 9am4.30pm;
free). As the last remaining national brewery in the region (ironically
producing Rainier and Henry Weinhard brews, two of its former
rivals, which were swallowed up by current owner Miller Beer),
the Olympia complex overlooks Tumwater Falls
, now part of a park but once a rich salmon-fishing site for the
Nisqually tribe.
