The Great Olympia Real Estate Boom: 'Only a Question of Time'
As the capital city experiences a frenzy of property sales and predicts its future as a metropolis powered by Turnwater Falls, locals debate whether the boom is sustainable or just hype.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
OLYMPIA, Feb. 18.—News has just reached this city of the destruction by fire of the residence of Mr. A. McLeod of Bush Prairie. It is reported that the fire was the result of a defective flue, and that the residence was totally destroyed, the loss being about $300. It is not known whether the furniture was insured.
Olympia real estate seems to be some distance above par, and it still goes rapidly up. The sales so far this month aggregate about $185,000, and from present appearances the last half of the month will be livelier than the first. A well-informed gentleman of this city, being asked by your correspondent his opinion on the cause of this remarkable real estate boom, replied as follows: "It is just beginning to dawn upon the people of this city and also non-residents who have looked into the matter, that Olympia cannot fail to become a large and important city in the future. It is only a question of a very short time when there must be a railroad constructed from the great Puget Sound country to the Inland country, and that railroad will have to come to Olympia. It can go anyplace else. The Seattle & Southern will come here because the people here will offer it such inducements that it cannot possibly refuse them. The magnificent water power at Turnwater is alone sufficient to make this a city of many thousand inhabitants, just as that water power begins to be properly utilized. The growth of Seattle and other cities in proof of the correctness of this assertion has come naturally, and it has come for the reasons I have narrated."
There are now six clerks employed in the County auditor's office, while two months ago the entire work in that office was done by Auditor Tweed and one deputy.
Mr. Joseph P. Dwyer and Miss Mary Connors, both of Mason county, were united in marriage yesterday by Rev. Dr. Smith.
The daily Book, the first newspaper to be started by the Seattle Publishing Company, will be started in about a week. The Press will be taken up and it is proposed to make it first-class as far as space affects.
This 1890s boomlet captures the speculative fever that has periodically gripped Washington real estate markets. The reliance on future railroad connections and water power to justify skyrocketing land prices mirrors modern debates over transit-oriented development and tech-driven housing affordability in cities like Seattle and Olympia today.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.