Olympia to Boston: 'The Athens of the Northwest' Makes Its Case

Since some of our Eastern friends have recently visited Puget Sound, but have passed us by on the other side, much to our deep regret, I beg to state that thirty miles south of Tacoma and fifty miles south of Seattle, at the extreme southern point of navigation on the Sound, is located a town called Olympia. It is the home of men, if not of gods. It was the home of civilized people at a time when the place now marked Tacoma was the hiding-place of bears, and when the site of the present city of Seattle was partly occupied as an Indian camping-ground. But the fact that it is an old town is itself no strong claim for respectful attention from Unitarians, for they are not in the habit of giving respectful attention to things merely because they are old. Olympia has other claims for respect than its antiquity. It is the permanent capital of the state of Washington, a state fifteen thousand square miles larger than Illinois.

It was the original capital of the territory; and, since the organization of the government here, it has remained the capital. Some of the maps printed in the East place the star representing Olympia at a distance inland from Puget Sound. It was something of a surprise, therefore, for me to find, soon after my arrival, that steamboats from Seattle and Tacoma and other points discharged their loads of passengers and freight very nearly in the center of the city every day. The 'lay of the land' occupied by the city site looks as if it might have been arranged after the plan of a Roman amphitheater around the head and sides of Budd's Inlet, which is a thread of Puget Sound — a frayed raveling of the Pacific Ocean that somehow got tangled and transfixed between snow-draped mountain peaks and ranges from one thousand to fourteen thousand feet high, extending one hundred and forty miles inland, with a shore line of over nineteen hundred miles in length. On the maps different parts bear a confusing variety of local names, but the entire body of water is generally spoken of as Puget Sound. In the literature of the real estate man it is frequently referred to as 'The Mediterranean of America,' and Olympia as the 'Athens of the Northwest.'

Though about as far away from Boston as it can be without getting entirely outside of the United States, the Puget Sound country is closely related to Boston by historical ties. The first white American who visited these shores was a Boston man, Captain Robert Gray, who came to the Sound just one hundred years ago this present year of grace, 1892. The natives of this region, therefore, called all white men who came here subsequently 'Boston men.' In the Chinook jargon, even unto this day 'Boston man' means white man.

Boston also gave the territory its pioneer governor, General Isaac I. Stevens. The wife and daughter of Governor Stevens are now residents of Boston; and the son, Gen. Hazard Stevens, divides his time between Boston and Olympia. Hazard Stevens was a member of the first board of trustees of the Unitarian society, and it was he who drafted its present articles of incorporation. This was twenty years ago. The society in Olympia was, therefore, the first Unitarian organization in the territory and the state of Washington. The pioneer Unitarian minister was also a Boston man, Rev. John C. Kimball. His successor, Rev. David Utter, came here from the same place. As proof of the enduring work done by the two pioneer ministers, it may be mentioned that, though the church building burned down and though the society was without a regularly employed pastor for ten years, it still exists. — Rev. Napoleon Hoagland, in the Christian Register.