Beer, Electricity, and Waterfalls
Sep. 3rd, 2021 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerOlympic Peninsula Travelog #2
Tumwater, WA - Fri, 3 Sep 2021. 10:30am.
We got off to a later start on our first full day of visiting the Olympic Peninsula than I intended this morning. It was reasonable, though, given the late hour we arrived last night. I swatted the snooze button several times and roused from bed only at 8. By 9 we were underway.
Our first stop of the day was not that far away, in Tumwater, next to Olympia, the capital of Washington. We visited Tumwater Falls at Brewery Park, a quiet little park with walking trails near downtown.
Tumwater Falls is actually a series of small falls on the Deschutes River. Together they fall 82'. The falls were key to the first American settlement in this area. In the 1840s settlers built a gristmill and a sawmill to harness the water power. By the 1870s several more mills were constructed. In 1890 the first hydropower plant was built to generate electricity. The dam pictured above is at upper falls and was constructed in 1904 to help channel water for a bigger generation plant.
Gristmills, sawmills, and power plants aren't the only things that were built by these falls. German immigrant Leopold Schmidt built a successful brewery here in 1896. The modern(ish) analog didn't occur to me until half through my walk, though, when I saw a vintage sign bearing the slogan, "It's the Water".
"It's the Water". That jogged my memory. I remember buying beer under that slogan— and my friends and I all making fun of it— when I was a college student. You see, Schmidt's didn't name his product Tumwater Beer, he named it Olympia Beer.
Well, Olympia Beer is no more. Ownership changed hands in the 1980s, then twice in the 1990s, then at least once more since... and the latest owner stopped brewing and selling it in January this year. But the falls and the footbridge in that vintage advertisement are still here!
BTW, my college classmates and I made fun of Olympia Beer because it was one of the cheap brands out there and had a flavor to match. "It's the water"... yeah, it was bad water! It's probably unfair to blame the actual water, though. The conglomerate that bought out the Schmidt family operation apparently cheapened the production, turning what had been considered a great local beer for many years into nationally distributed plonk.
Tumwater, WA - Fri, 3 Sep 2021. 10:30am.
We got off to a later start on our first full day of visiting the Olympic Peninsula than I intended this morning. It was reasonable, though, given the late hour we arrived last night. I swatted the snooze button several times and roused from bed only at 8. By 9 we were underway.
Our first stop of the day was not that far away, in Tumwater, next to Olympia, the capital of Washington. We visited Tumwater Falls at Brewery Park, a quiet little park with walking trails near downtown.
Tumwater Falls is actually a series of small falls on the Deschutes River. Together they fall 82'. The falls were key to the first American settlement in this area. In the 1840s settlers built a gristmill and a sawmill to harness the water power. By the 1870s several more mills were constructed. In 1890 the first hydropower plant was built to generate electricity. The dam pictured above is at upper falls and was constructed in 1904 to help channel water for a bigger generation plant.
Gristmills, sawmills, and power plants aren't the only things that were built by these falls. German immigrant Leopold Schmidt built a successful brewery here in 1896. The modern(ish) analog didn't occur to me until half through my walk, though, when I saw a vintage sign bearing the slogan, "It's the Water".
"It's the Water". That jogged my memory. I remember buying beer under that slogan— and my friends and I all making fun of it— when I was a college student. You see, Schmidt's didn't name his product Tumwater Beer, he named it Olympia Beer.
Well, Olympia Beer is no more. Ownership changed hands in the 1980s, then twice in the 1990s, then at least once more since... and the latest owner stopped brewing and selling it in January this year. But the falls and the footbridge in that vintage advertisement are still here!
BTW, my college classmates and I made fun of Olympia Beer because it was one of the cheap brands out there and had a flavor to match. "It's the water"... yeah, it was bad water! It's probably unfair to blame the actual water, though. The conglomerate that bought out the Schmidt family operation apparently cheapened the production, turning what had been considered a great local beer for many years into nationally distributed plonk.
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Date: 2021-09-04 01:40 pm (UTC)