THE HIGHWAY THAT SHAPED (AND BURIED) OLYMPIA

Sep 09, 2025

Interstate 5 is the West Coast's main artery and the only road to connect the three countries of North America. But around here, it's more than a highway. It destroyed Tumwater. It created Lacey. And it completely redefined Olympia.

Before 1956, all traffic had to pass through downtown Olympia. When I-5 opened, the traffic vanished. The city center became a ghost town of vacant stores and eerily quiet streets. For seven decades, ambitious revitalization efforts turned abandoned shells into the downtown we have today.

Lacey was born with the highway. It's completely defined by its four exits. So if you've ever wondered, "Where is Downtown Lacey?" The answer is simple: It was never built.

In 1952, Tumwater officials made a shocking decision: they voted to abandon their downtown core. Just think about that. The earliest settlement, the first Washington town at the end of the Oregon Trail — literally the oldest city in Western Washington — was deliberately surrendered and demolished. So if you've ever wondered, "Where is downtown Tumwater?" The answer is grim: It’s buried under millions of tons of concrete and asphalt right between exits 103 and 104.

WALL OFF THE WATERFRONT

150 years ago, 99% of Olympia's population lived downtown.

80 years ago, it was 50%.

Today, the majority of the people seen downtown are visitors. That’s because a little less than 3% of the city's population lives here.

Population density and a critical mass of residents are key drivers of downtown vitality. Urban planning research, particularly from organizations like the International Downtown Association and the Brookings Institution, consistently shows a correlation between a strong residential population and the overall health of a downtown area.

Downtown has a lot of overlapping uses and a lot of overlapping problems. The single most effective step we can take to solve all of them is to create more downtown housing.

In 2002, a campaign was launched to restrict downtown housing development under the pretense that it would block views of the mountains. Yard signs went up with the slogan, "DON’T WALL OFF THE WATERFRONT." The campaign was successful. We held out for "views" and single-family home sprawl took over huge swaths of wilderness. A decade passed without new downtown housing. That lost decade still shapes Olympia’s housing crisis today.

We don’t need to cut down trees to build in downtown. 3% is just way too low a figure. I say, wall off the waterfront. To hell with the views.

MAYOR STINKY

You might not know it, but modern-day downtown Olympia is man-made.

Between 1909 and 1911, Olympia Mayor P. U. Carlyon bucketed 2.3 million cubic yards of mud from the harbor to make a great stinking sandcastle. At the time, everyone promised to name his 29-block neighborhood "Carlyon’s Fill," but the name never stuck, although it stunk. Carlyon died before it stopped stinking or his ultimate dream came to be: He envisioned Capitol Lake, an idea that came to fruition fifty years later.

Next time you’re downtown, give the neighborhood a sniff. See if you can catch a whiff of history. Downtown’s very foundation carries the mark of messy, improvised planning.

BIG BEER

Olympia — a city with a population under 60,000 — has a whopping 83 bars, with 41 of them located downtown. Why?

A 2005 study from the city’s future police chief showed a link between our high number of bars and our higher rate of violent bar incidents. The study compared Olympia to a dozen similar-sized cities in the state.

A common complaint is that the bar scene in Olympia is mediocre. If there’s truth in this, market saturation could be the cause. I have a fantasy: Olympia’s bar owners hold a summit to negotiate a reduction in bar quantity in the name of boosting bar quality.

The high number of bars isn't random. It's a relic from the big beer era. You might not know it, but for most of our history, beer was our second-largest industry.

The lost spirit (and beer) of the old Olympia Brewery still haunts this shuttered million-square-foot complex. Under its shadow, at Tumwater Falls, the Olympia-Tumwater Foundation maintains an open-air museum to promote the so-called heritage. But until this complex is redeveloped, our beer-fueled past remains a legacy of lost potential, irrelevant trivia, and ghosts. Cheers!