Olympic Stadium is part and parcel of Hoquiam City's past, present and future, many friendly and not so friendly competitions have been held within its heavy wooden walls and many hundreds of thousands of fans, participants and players have enjoyed its warm and welcoming embrace. The stadium has known in one sense or another the many faces of those who just passed through or made their homes there, from great grand fathers to grand fathers to fathers and their sons and those that come after them Olympic stadium has always stood in silent testament to the greatness of these men in whatever endeavor they have chosen to undertake.
The town truthfully got its interesting name from the river, which is its namesake that the Native Americans called in their own tongue "hungry for wood" river and this name aptly applied also to the first white settlers who in the 1850's, established the first lumber camp on it's shores, because the men never stopped coming over the years due to their insatiable hunger for wood. It is then but natural for the City fathers of the 1930's to commission an all-wood design for their City's stadium not so much so because they had an overflowing supply of it, but rather they wanted to make it as an underlying statement that logging has been good to the town and this is absolutely true for some of their so-called lumber elite.
The city applied for a Civil Works Administration grant with the all wood design persistently present and in 1932, the grant was approved. 6 years later, with enough funds, a final architectural design that almost everyone agreed to and a whole lot of lumber, construction started of the all-wood Olympic stadium.
In November of that very same year the stadium opened its gates to its proud and joyous people. The stadium played host to a multitude of sports but none more so than baseball.
In 2006 through the actions of a representative of Congress, the Olympic stadium was granted a National Registry of Historical Places status as a national heritage building and the year before that the same Congressman secured a grant for funds to renovate the city stadium from the federal governments "Save America's Treasures" program. This added to the city's heritage sites such as the Polson's home turned museum and the Hoquiam castle also a former home of one the Grays Harbor lumber barons, Robert Lytle.
The all-wood construct that is Olympic Stadium is made up of old growth fir heavy-timber frame with cedar shingle siding. The stadium was designed and built in a truncated U-shape with angled corners, an open segment of a 2 story grandstand faces to the east to shelter fans and players alike from possible wind and rain coming from the ocean. The all wooden park appears to be one of the more bizarre in the country, with the shingled exterior, the covered from top to bottom 'L' shaped grandstand extending all the way down the line in right and extending into the outfield. The seats are wooden grandstands, which survey the fields and are in exceptional shape.
The most recent of users were the Grays Harbor Gulls of the Western League that closed shop in 1997 and the current Grays Harbor Bearcats, a semi-professional football team that now calls Olympic Stadium its official home.
The stadium can hold ten thousand fans within its stands and it host a lot of games in from both professional and local amateur teams, the town evidently loves sports and this shows with the number of teams it plays in as many events. Aside from the semi-pro Bearcats football team, there's the city High School football team, Youth Baseball team, the Youth football and many more. It also serves the City of Hoquiam as its community center for bigger annual events.
The town truthfully got its interesting name from the river, which is its namesake that the Native Americans called in their own tongue "hungry for wood" river and this name aptly applied also to the first white settlers who in the 1850's, established the first lumber camp on it's shores, because the men never stopped coming over the years due to their insatiable hunger for wood. It is then but natural for the City fathers of the 1930's to commission an all-wood design for their City's stadium not so much so because they had an overflowing supply of it, but rather they wanted to make it as an underlying statement that logging has been good to the town and this is absolutely true for some of their so-called lumber elite.
The city applied for a Civil Works Administration grant with the all wood design persistently present and in 1932, the grant was approved. 6 years later, with enough funds, a final architectural design that almost everyone agreed to and a whole lot of lumber, construction started of the all-wood Olympic stadium.
In November of that very same year the stadium opened its gates to its proud and joyous people. The stadium played host to a multitude of sports but none more so than baseball.
In 2006 through the actions of a representative of Congress, the Olympic stadium was granted a National Registry of Historical Places status as a national heritage building and the year before that the same Congressman secured a grant for funds to renovate the city stadium from the federal governments "Save America's Treasures" program. This added to the city's heritage sites such as the Polson's home turned museum and the Hoquiam castle also a former home of one the Grays Harbor lumber barons, Robert Lytle.
The all-wood construct that is Olympic Stadium is made up of old growth fir heavy-timber frame with cedar shingle siding. The stadium was designed and built in a truncated U-shape with angled corners, an open segment of a 2 story grandstand faces to the east to shelter fans and players alike from possible wind and rain coming from the ocean. The all wooden park appears to be one of the more bizarre in the country, with the shingled exterior, the covered from top to bottom 'L' shaped grandstand extending all the way down the line in right and extending into the outfield. The seats are wooden grandstands, which survey the fields and are in exceptional shape.
The most recent of users were the Grays Harbor Gulls of the Western League that closed shop in 1997 and the current Grays Harbor Bearcats, a semi-professional football team that now calls Olympic Stadium its official home.
The stadium can hold ten thousand fans within its stands and it host a lot of games in from both professional and local amateur teams, the town evidently loves sports and this shows with the number of teams it plays in as many events. Aside from the semi-pro Bearcats football team, there's the city High School football team, Youth Baseball team, the Youth football and many more. It also serves the City of Hoquiam as its community center for bigger annual events.
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