1853: Governor Stevens Arrives

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Olympia became the Territorial capital by default since it was the first place that the newly appointed territorial governor found shelter on a rainy November in 1853.

Washington Territory was carved out of Oregon Territory by an act of Congress signed by U.S. President Millard Fillmore on March 2, 1853. 

Gov. Isaac Stevens

President Franklin Pierce, who took office two days later, selected the Territory’s first officers, designating as governor Isaac Stevens, an engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers and a Democrat who had actively supported Pierce’s campaign for the presidency.  He also assigned Stevens Head of Indian Affairs, and head of the transcontinental Railroad Survey.

Before leaving Washington, D.C., in April 1853, Stevens wrote to Arthur Denny in Seattle, seeking advice on issues and indicating that Seattle would be the location of a capital for the Territory. In addition to his duties as governor, Stevens sought and received command of a party surveying a railroad route from the Mississippi River to Puget Sound. 

Hampered by incessant bad weather and numerous washouts and landslides, Stevens finally arrived in Olympia after an arduous overland journey in November 1853, and decided to quit his quest to Seattle, and stay instead where he had found ample shelter.   He designated the town -- population 100 -- as territorial capital.  At the time, it is among the largest settlements in the Territory. 
 

Parker & Colter Store, site of first Washington Territorial Legislature in 1854

On November 28, 1853, he issued a proclamation calling for a Territorial legislature to be elected on January 30, 1854, and assemble in Olympia on February 27. 

Governor Stevens addressed the newly elected legislature on February 28, 1854, and the legislators set to work passing laws for the Territory.

One of the first tasks of the new government was to take a census of the Territory, which was quickly taken by U.S. Marshal J. Patton Anderson.  The census reported only 3,965 inhabitants (Indians were presumably not counted) .

Although subsequently surpassed in population and commercial prominence by other cities, Olympia has successfully fought off several attempts to move the territorial capital and overcame being bypassed by the railroad by building a railroad of its own. It grew with its own economy as Washington grew as a state, in addition to being the seat of government.