To spot Sylvester Park, look for a spacious grassy square with crisscrossing paths, shading trees, and a distinctive white gazebo standing proudly in the center-right across from the impressive old Victorian building.
Welcome to Sylvester Park, the heart and soul of downtown Olympia! Imagine, if you will, it’s 1850: you’re walking through wild, uncleared land that Edmund Sylvester himself just gifted to the city. Now, at first, nothing but a tangle of brush and maybe a blockhouse-nothing much to picnic on, unless you like sitting on logs or, worse, prickly bushes! Back then, this open space was more than just a park. When the Puget Sound War brought fear to Olympia, folks crowded here, building a 15-foot-high blockade along what’s now Legion Way SE, with a cannon aimed and ready. Can you picture hundreds of worried townspeople keeping watch at night-yet, in a twist, the attack they dreaded never came.
Leap forward to 1893, and the transformation is almost magical. With the Old Capitol Building now peering across the street, Sylvester Park becomes the city’s proud plaza: a Victorian bandstand pops up, a pond full of fish shimmers under leafy maple and beech trees, and all the paths crunch underfoot with clamshell gravel. There’s even a decorative iron fence-pretty fancy for those days. Then, in 1903, the park really draws a crowd. President Theodore Roosevelt himself strides onto the bandstand-that’s right, the Rough Rider!-to give a rousing 40-minute speech to thousands.
But every garden has its changes; the bandstand vanishes in 1928, and the pond dries up after World War II. In 1955, the state says, “Let’s turn it into a parking garage!”-but Olympians vote to save their green sanctuary instead. Today’s gazebo, built in 1975, stands as a cheerful nod to all those lively days past. As you wander, look for the historic markers and picture the park’s long parade of picnics, protests, and parades, echoing through time right beneath your feet. Quite a journey for a patch of grass!
