Before Olympia

In its early days, the City of Olympia had many names.   The local native tribes referred to it as Cheetwoot which meant the “place of the bear.”   The first white settlers in the area  Edmund Sylvester and Levi Smith filed a land claim and named the area Smither, or maybe Smithfield. In 1850, the name that stuck was Olympia, suggested by Colonel I.N. Ebey, for the Olympic Mountains, which were prominent in the city’s backyard. In the year of 1853, Olympia began a port city. In the year of 1949, there was an old state capitol building that burned and lost its clock tower to an earthquake.  The building has since been restored and is now serving as a state office building. Olympia’s main usage and fame came from logging, lumber and plywood, which provided much of the city’s money. However by the 1970’s a decline in logging capped with new environmental regulations forced most of the mills in downtown to close.  At the same time, a new state college, The Evergreen State College, opened just west of the city.

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