While sorting through some old books, an undated newspaper clipping slipped out of one. It is from a newspaper that used to be called The Daily Olympian and by my guess from references in the article and surrounding bits, it dates from 1971-1974. I corrected some typos and added my own comments. OlyBloggers might enjoy this one:

What's In a Name?

Streets Remember Early Olympians

By Fred Olson

Olympia street names ...

As the old timers about them and the names conjure up nostalgic yarns of pioneering, sternwheelers and the off-beat, unrecorded development of a capital city.

They're taken by granted by many. But street names like Bigelow, Sylvester, Cushing or Rogers can be traced back to the early pioneers who filed donation land claims which helped settle Puget Sound country.

While long-time Thurston County residents and historians George Elder and Hollis Fultz don't exactly date back to the days of the first pioneers, they have studied Capital City history and have spent a lot of time watching Olympia grow.

Ask Elder and Fultz about the motorway monikers and time whirls back to days long ago ...

To a warm summer morning in the early 1900s, for instance, when a young George Elder is out hawking Washington Recorders. Elder, who came to Olympia from Kansas in 1906, needs 75-cents for a sternwheeler ticket.

"Sternwheelers, like the Multnomah, Sol G. Simpson and Greyhound, used to put into Olympia daily for runs to Seattle, Tacoma and Shelton," Elder recalls.

"They hauled everything from beer wagons to cattle and pigs," Elder says that for 50-cents you could get a one-way ticket to Tacoma and for 75-cents a round trip. "And for an extra two bits, you could get a sandwich."

"We wanted to earn enough money to make the trip to Tacoma. That was one of the grand trips, especially getting down into the engine room. And maybe we could even sneak a few oysters along the way," the former county commissioner remembers.

Elder and his cronies would catch the boat at the end of today's State Avenue, where an old Olympia family, the Percivals, maintained a warehouse and Percival Dock. The family lived on the West Side, according to Elder, in the vicinity of the street which today bears it name. [stevenl note: in the early 1970s, the end of State St. consisted of some rough looking warehouses sitting on pilings, with a few aluminum boat sheds floating alongside. That whale carving, since dubbed "The Turdfish" by a few irreverent locals, didn't exist yet. Nor did the boardwalk or romantic statue of the tall woman kissing the shorter man. Sometimes things change for the better in this wicked world.]

Fultz by research turns the clock back to the 1850s when Edmund Sylvester was considering Olympia for a territorial government seat. Columbia Street was then known as Chinook Street, Fultz explains, "and justly so."

"There lived the Indians, at times as many as 200 of them. The Squaxin Indian tribe reached the site with canoes, bringing clams, mussels, salmon and venison which they would trade for old clothes, mirrors, beads and anything the white wives cared to trade for."

Chinook may have been appropriate, but the name wasn't to stick. Fultz says, "The town fathers, looking forward to a new territory called Columbia, didn't feel the designation Chinook Street was dignified enough, so they changed the name to Columbia."

Following statehood and the development of Olympia, the area around Columbia was to be the site of another community-- Chinatown. "Everyone of any importance had a Chinese servant for cook," Fultz recalls.

"But the day of the Chinese passed and a seedy inhabitant moved into the area of Capitol Lake. During the depression of 1929 that area became the home of many families, bootleggers and derelicts who could find no other place to live," Fultz explained. "Somebody called it Little Hollywood and thus it remained until the depression passed."

Two of the elected officials in that first territorial government Fultz referred to have Olympia streets named after them today-- Sylvester and Bigelow.

In the same year, D.R. Bigelow, who had staked a claim on what is now the East Side of Olympia, was elected the first treasurer and later became holder of other offices.

Fultz, who now serves as Thurston County coroner, reminds us that his predecessor Sylvester was responsible for a much larger territory. The original county, he points out, was created by an act of the Oregon State Legislature in 1852, and stretched all the way from what is now Lewis County to the Canadian border and from the Cascades to the Pacific.

Other street-corner appellations have been derived from the land claims filed by early pioneers.

Milroy Street, for instance, originated with Valerius Milroy, who, according to Elder, came to the Olympia area in 1863. Milroy started a livery stable, then later went into the mercantile business.

In 1889, President Benjamin Harrison appointed Milroy postmaster, a position he held until 1894. Later, in 1901, Milroy was made Olympia City Clerk, according to Elder.

Another pioneer family, the Chambers, settled on Chambers Prairie, south of Olympia, according to Fultz. One of the many brothers, Fultz added, was Hardaway Chambers who owned much property on the south end, where Chambers prairie now runs.

Not all the motorway cognomens came from the names of the first settlers. Elder theorizes the Union Avenue was so named because it connected the Bigelow Addition with the Sylvester Addition.

[stevenl note: Yow! Dig this next sentence, Olybloggers:] Union Avenue used to be at the head of the east waterway of Budd Inlet, which extended in to the existing area of Chestnut and Cherry streets, and all the way to Union Avenue.

And Decatur Street, Fultz informs, was named after a sloop of war which saved Seattle from the Indians during the Indian uprising of the 185o's.

One of the oldest motorways, according to Elder, is Boulevard Road. Early settlers knew the road as Grand Boulevard, since it was 100 feet wide.