Capitol Lake neighborhood [Olympia as it never was]

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Capitol Lake neighborhood [Olympia as it never was]

Submitted by emmettoconnell on Fri, 04/25/2008 - 9:16am.

While not technically an "antiquated plat," like I wrote about before (look at my earlier post for background), I found something very interesting in the maps prepared by TRPC for the city in their discussion of the old, planned neighborhoods.

At one point, the city had laid out block in what is now Capitol Lake. Here it is overlaid in Google Earth:

This was obviously a point in time when filling in tidelands was an acceptable thing. Take the port peninsula and the old Swantown Slough. Maybe if Olympia had another 20 years to work with on the front end or just a bit more of an economic development bone, we wouldn't be arguing about whether to open up the dam. There wouldn't have been a dam.

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Capitol Lake neighborhood.JPG	33.81 KB

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I can't help but think,

Submitted by Rob Richards on Fri, 04/25/2008 - 9:24am.

this would have been better than our nasty lake.

Can you talk more about why this didn't happen; who proposed it?

Also, this image is the view from the north looking south?

North looking south

Submitted by emmettoconnell on Fri, 04/25/2008 - 9:26am.

And, I have no idea why it was proposed or why it didn't happen.

I can assume it was proposed generally the same reason the Port Peninsula and Swantown were filled. At the time they thought they needed more land and tidelands were the best place they could find to get them.

Probably the reason why the never ended up doing it was that the Capitol Lake project ended up getting there first.

Great Post

Submitted by stevenl on Fri, 04/25/2008 - 6:04pm.

A fun bit of lost history brought back to life.

We always seem to wait for earthquakes to sort these things out. I've seen Deschutes Parkway fall into the Lake and be rebuilt twice, so perhaps building on the flats wouldn't be the wisest move.

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