Three specific themes reveal different sides of Olympia for a stay: an early house, the Farmers Market in the city center, and a waterfront park with a boardwalk. They range from the architectural history of a single building to a market with more than 120 vendors and a waterfront stretch with named endpoints.

Bigelow House Museum: Early Architectural History

The Daniel and Ann Elizabeth Bigelow House, now the Bigelow House Museum, is one of the oldest documented surviving houses in Olympia and was built by 1860. This places a single building at the forefront as a reference point for the city’s early architectural history. If you are interested in historic homes, the date of 1860 provides a clear point of reference. This distinguishes it from the more recent history of the Farmers Market’s location: here, the focus is on a particular house and its early construction, while at the market, the history of its current location matters.

Market Activity in Downtown

The Olympia Farmers Market has more than 120 vendors and has been at its current location in downtown Olympia since 1996. The number of vendors describes the scale of market activity; the year marks the history of its current location. This creates a distinct urban focus for a stay, alongside the single historic house. If market activity particularly interests you, you can take this into account when planning your stay: the focus is on numerous vendors and a downtown location, not the history of a single building.

Percival Landing: Park and Waterfront Walkway

Percival Landing is a 3.38-acre waterfront park in downtown Olympia. It was named after an old commercial steamboat wharf, a well-known maritime landmark in the Pacific Northwest. The park includes a 0.9-mile boardwalk along the eastern shore of West Bay, running from the Fourth Avenue Bridge to Thurston Avenue. The park thus brings together maritime history in its name and a precisely described waterfront stretch. The two measurements refer to different things: 3.38 acres is the area of the park, while 0.9 miles is the length of the boardwalk. This helps you understand the park as an area and the boardwalk as a route within it. For orientation, the area describes the park as a whole, while the endpoints make the boardwalk’s direction and extent clear.

Two Years, Two Meanings

The years have different meanings: 1860 refers to the house’s construction date; 1996 marks how long the Farmers Market has been at its current downtown location. These are not equivalent founding dates. The distinction is useful for placing Olympia in time: one date concerns a building, the other a market’s current location. This lets you consider house history and market history as different aspects of a stay.

For the broader travel overview: Thurston County.