Incidents and Annals of Settlement II
Washington Standard - Olympia
March 1, 1918

The occupancy of the site of the future Olympia. the then "Smithfield" of New Market precinct, Lewis county, having been noted in the previous article, it now becomes necessary to make an extended notice of the advent of population to the adjacent region, in order to appreciate the elements of Olympia settlement and progress. The history of all Oregon settlements, and this includes those made in the portion now known as Washington territory, exhibits a slow development of towns or communities, attributable to the restrictive provisions of the first land law of the Oregon Provisional government, continued by the donation act of 1850 and not materially amended by the present homestead law, which compels parties who desire to acquire title to lands to reside continuously upon and cultivate them.

Thus while Olympia or some point enjoying a name, possibly fortunate enough to be designated as a county seat or to be recognized as a post office, is the real destination or intended domicile of a settler, yet that land law defeated aggregation of population, wildly scattered those who were really but one community in interest, destroyed that mutuality of dependence upon our fellow beings so promotive of and essential to human happiness and comfort. 

Parties might be induced by donations of land to settle in the territory, but instead of building up communities, making settlements inviting by securing social benefit which community brings as a necessary incident, such a land law scattered instead of aggregating - it multiplied the number of settlements without aiding to establish a single community. It denied the alleviation of sharing each other's labors and lightening the duty of each by co-operative efforts it enhanced school expenses or forced the settler to bring up his children in ignorance.

It multiplied the number of roads, imposing at the same time upon a single individual the heavy burden of opening a way out or staying eternally a hermit, away from all society but his own immediate household. Large tracts were dotted upon and but little improved, while no locality however blessed by nature was able to receive a marked development. The towns were therefore necessarily compelled to remain a mere rendezvous or bazaar for the exchange of staple articles of produce for imported merchandise.

Those early settlers complied in good faith with these restrictive provisions or rather the penalties imposed as the condition of being willing to convert waste and wild lands into settlements adapted as the houses of men and women, never absenting themselves from their claims save to pursue for a time some paying employment whereby they might earn the means to improve their lands or support and educate their families. 

The town, though not their abiding place, was yet the point from whence they "hailed," where they expected to be reached should inquirers seek them, whose growth was but the reflex of the propriety of judgment in adopting this as their home. Thus, even now. while Olympia proper will hardly number 1,000 Inhabitants. yet it is the home or "head-center" for settlers extending through several adjacent counties, whose business connections inseparably identify them as part and parcel of its constitution.

The "Sylvester claim," the Smithfield of 1847, had then already given indication that it was destined to become the southernmost of the outlets and distributing points for the settlements then commencing in the basin of Puget Sound. The unrivaled waterpower at Tumwater, at the mouth of Des Chutes river (the extreme head of Budd's inlet), had already been appropriated as a private claim. 

The prairie south of it was occupied by a number of American families. The American settlements of New Market (called by the natives "Steh-chass" and now Tumwater) and Smithfield were already interwoven as a common settlement with a common interest and common destiny. A few settlers were scattered between the head of navigation on the Cowlitz river (Cowlitz Landing) and Puget Sound.

Already the vast commercial advantages of the Sound were appreciated, and those pioneers fully realized that from the Columbia river to Puget Sound, at no distant day, there must be a great highway for travel with the terminus of the land portage at the head of the Sound, which fact alone would attach importance to Sylvester's location. Smithfield then with its one cabin was the recognized port of the New Market settlement and that wide scope of country lying to the southward between, the head of the Sound and the head of navigation on the Cowlitz river.

Regarding New Market and the settlements immediately connected with it as adjuncts of and the contingent upon which Olympia relied for its growth and claim to future importance, the development of the progress of that settlement is an inseparable part of Olympia history. A retrospect therefore of the pioneer American settlements north of the Columbia river becomes a pardonable digression, fully justified if not demanded.