Thurston, Oregon’s first territorial delegate to Congress. The Oregon Territorial Legislature acted on the matter by amended the bill at the request of Michael T. Thurston County covers 719 square miles at the head of Budd Inlet located at the southern tip of Puget Sound.At the Cowlitz convention in 1851, delegates from the Oregon Territory north of the Columbia River - besides petitioning for a new territory - also asked for a new county to be called “Simmons” in the area then known as Lewis County. Olympia welcomed the first Custom House on Puget Sound in 1851, and by 1852 was the county seat for the newly organized Thurston County. The house remained a landmark for many years but was moved in 1961 and later burned.ĭrawn to the small peninsula as the first access to Puget Sound from the Columbia River on the Cowlitz Trail, American settlers numbered 996 in the area by 1853. The home was the largest in Olympia and Sylvester’s strong-minded wife Clara hosted the first meeting of the Woman’s Club there in 1883 and housed a number of visiting suffragettes during the fight of Washington women for the right to vote. Sylvester erected the showplace of early Olympia along Capitol Way between Seventh and Eighth Streets facing the water.
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Sylvester was a far-sighted man visualizing his settlement as a capital and center of timber trade although it did not reach its full potential in his lifetime. Sylvester took up a claim south of Olympia and his partner, Levi Lathrop Smith, whom he had met in Oregon, settled in what is now known as Olympia.Īfter Smith’s death in 1848, Sylvester, although owner of the area, did not lay out a town until his return from an ill- fated trip to the California gold fields in 1850. He remained in the Astoria-Portland area for two years but, being a native New Englander, he felt that the salt water climate would restore his ailing health. A native of Eastport, Maine, Sylvester came to Oregon in 1843 at the young age of twenty-two. Sylvester, a Maine native, laid out a town in a New England style with a town square, tree lined streets, land for schools, a Masonic Hall, and capitol grounds.Įdmund Sylvester is known as the founder of Olympia. Ebey, a local resident in recognition of the view of the majestic Olympic mountains seen to the north on a clear day. The town was officially platted in 1850 by Sylvester, at which point it was given the name Olympia, as suggested by Isaac N. The first American settlers were Levi Lathrop Smith and Edmund Sylvester who claimed the town site in 1846, naming it Smither or Smithster (and later Smithfield), after themselves. In recent years, the inlet has also been called Olympia Harbor. He rejoined the United States Navy in 1861 and was killed in action March 22, 1862, during the Civil War. He resigned his commission on April 29, 1853. Budd was appointed a midshipman on February 2, 1829. Budd acting master of the Peacock and a member of the U.S. Budd Inlet was named by Lieutenant Commander Charles Wilkes for Thomas A. The inlet is shallow at its southern end and requires dredging of a channel for waterborne commerce. More about Budd InletĪ wide, navigable body of water extending north from Olympia about six miles to Boston Harbor. Charles Wilkes came to the site in 1841 and named the waterfront bay Budd Inlet after Midshipman Thomas A. Peter Puget and a crew from the British Vancouver Expedition visited the site in 1792.
The falls of the Deschutes River at Tumwater called “Stehtsasamish” by the Nisqually Indians may have been occupied as a permanent village site for shellfish and salmon harvesting for 500 years or more before the coming of white settlers. Potlatches, the Northwest tribal custom in which tribal leaders shared their wealth with neighboring tribal groups, were held both east and west of the Inlet near Olympia. The end of what we now know as Budd Inlet was a favorite shellfish gathering site for many Coastal Salish tribes, including the Nisqually, Duwamish and Squaxin. Located on the southernmost point of Puget Sound, the peninsula known as Olympia was Steh-Chass to the Coastal Salish who occupied the site for many generations before the American settlement was established.
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