Thurston history book offers diversion as well as glimpses of a not-so-different time
The Thurston County Historic Commission has just published “Water, Woods and Prairies,” a book of essays edited by Sandra Crowell and Shirley A. Stirling. It’s available at olympiahistory.org.
If the anxiety produced by the election, the pandemic, and other interlocking crises has fried your brain, this is a book to soothe your soul simply by reminding you that this too shall pass.
And even if your brain is too weary to read the whole book, you can dip in here and there and find people and events that surprise and delight you. For instance, there’s Fay Fuller, who in 1890 summited Mount Rainier wearing “heavy flannel underwear, a thick blue flannel bloomer skirt, woolen hose, heavy calfskin boy’s shoes with caulks, and a small straw hat.”
There’s Margaret Anne Carter Cogwell, a Black woman and entrepreneur who moved with her family to Rochester in 1919. Among other things, she raised turkeys that were sold in her son’s store in Seattle. She eventually retired to Seattle, and lived to be 100.
There also are essays about logging camps, railroads, union strife, the long rise and fall of lumber mills, the Depression, the massive dredging and filling of downtown Olympia, the advent of airplanes and freeways and the “modern era.”
Perhaps best of all for those just seeking diversion, there are photographs galore. They show, among other things, the breathtaking devastation of vast clearcuts, the construction of Interstate 5 as it tore out Tumwater’s downtown, and the commercial harvest of oysters in Budd Inlet before it was polluted by the lumber mills.
There’s also a photo that will quicken the hearts of those old enough to have been to the Evergreen Ballroom in Lacey when Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Hank Williams, Nat King Cole, Ray Charles and Little Richard performed there.
One measure of this book’s success is that it leaves us wanting more.
We especially wish for more stories about early Japanese, Chinese and Korean immigrant communities, and the more recent immigrants from Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. Mentioning their existence wasn’t enough. We want to know more about how and why they came, and how they are faring now.
We also are curious to learn more about how Fort Lewis (now part of Joint Base Lewis McChord) affected our county’s development, and to read much, much more about our county’s Black population. (Fortunately, Dr. Thelma Jackson is working on a book called “Blacks in Thurston County, Washington 1950-1975: An Oral History Anthology” that will be published next year.)
Sandra Crowell’s opening essay on Native people is excellent, and we were glad to see activist Billy Frank Jr. included, but we still wished for more about recent changes in local tribal nations. A more diverse collection of writers is definitely needed for the next volume.
We hope this book will inspire more people to write or record their own personal, family and community histories. Perhaps the Olympia Historical Society website could collect and publish them online.
Already on that website, a feature called “Sylvester’s Window” offers yet another way to capture the past. A series of six imaginative watercolors by Robert Chamberlain depict the view from pioneer Edmund Sylvester’s window on the hill facing downtown Olympia. The dates range from 1841 to 2001. Each is accompanied by an essay by Lynn Erickson, feature material about downtown neighbors, information about architectural styles of various buildings, and a list of questions suitable for use in a classroom.
Erickson’s essay about the 1933 Hunger March, depicted in one of the watercolors, reminds us that, as Mark Twain is quoted as saying, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.”
“In Sylvester Park,” Erickson writes, “people huddle around burn barrels for warmth and a group called the Volunteers of America offer hot coffee to shivering hands. ... A large group of unemployed citizens from around the state have come to the capital to ask for help. ... Police Chief Frank Cushman has estimated there are more than 500 protesters in town today. He has strongly cautioned the group against rioting. ... A ‘watchdog’ group, calling itself the ‘American Vigilantes of Thurston County’ are planning a swift citizen crackdown on future gatherings of ‘Communist agitators.’”
The suffering caused by the Great Depression was acute, widespread and long-lasting. The political divisions were deep and bitter. It was surely a moment in time as tense and tragic as the one we are in right now. The election of Franklin D. Roosevelt just a few months before the hunger march would soon offer relief and real support for working people. We hope that bit of history rhymes too.