The Carlyon Fill added dozens of blocks to downtown Olympia between 1909 and 1911. One of the first businesses in the area was the Olympia Canning Company. It was located between Columbia Street and Capitol Way, facing A Street.
Building Olympia’s Carlyon Fill in the 1900s
In 1911, Mark Ewald of the National Canning Company arrived in Olympia to drum up support for building a cannery on the newly created fill area. Investors included local farmers hoping to increase profits by getting their produce canned locally.
Construction finished just in time for the May 1912 rhubarb harvest. Fresh produce arrived by train and boat and left the same way: by train to the Midwest and by freighter to the East Coast. Their products were also enjoyed locally and regionally.
The cannery contracted with Thurston County farmers and promoted production through lectures. They even provided free strawberry weevil bait some years. Some produce was also shipped from eastern Washington.
In the late 1910s, the National Canning Company cannery was renamed the Olympia Canning Company. Founder Ewald served as its president until his death in 1941. A state and national industry leader, he was hailed as the “dean” of Pacific Northwest cannery men in his obituary. Ewald also invented (and patented) the fruit canning equipment used in the Olympia plant.
In 1919 the company decided to invest in a farm of its own, which would ensure produce to can and a place to demonstrate new farming techniques. The cannery bought a farm at Gull Harbor. Named the “Sunny Day Plantation,” it was better known by locals simply as the “Cannery Ranch” or “Cannery Farm.”
This property included about a mile of waterfront and 330 upland acres. In later years over 100 acres were under cultivation growing berries and fruit trees. Workers stayed in cabins on the property. The farm provided much needed employment during the Great Depression for people in Gull Harbor. Cannery manager Ivan Moorehouse lived on the property with his family.
Olympia Canning Company Markets to the World
The cannery processed both fruit and vegetables during its earliest years before switching over exclusively to fruit. This included apples, apricots, wild blackberries, cherries, gooseberries, huckleberries, loganberries, peaches, pears, plums, raspberries, strawberries and youngberries.
Work was seasonal and weather dependent, confined to summer and fall harvest months. Hundreds of workers, mostly women and girls, worked during canning season as packers.
Male employees worked as machinists, sheet metal workers and drivers. Workers were unionized and there were several strikes over pay during the 1930s. In 1936 workers negotiated a 2.5 cent per hour increase. Men now made 47.5 cents an hour and women 32.5 cents.
Production continued to increase throughout the 1920s. The late 1920s brought a new opportunity, a contract with a British freight line. These ships would pick up cargos of lumber and pulp in addition to canned food on their way back to the United Kingdom and continental Europe.
The Great Depression hit fruit prices hard and international shipping dwindled. But the cannery weathered the storm. The business could now store fruit in the port’s new cold storage plant. Built in 1928, the cannery used most of its 100,000 square feet of storage space. Cold storage also allowed the cannery to freeze strawberries for shipping.
The cannery expanded to the adjacent block across Capitol Way, connected by a breezeway.
Eating Olympia Pears in Cairo
World War II made Depression era troubles disappear. Now an essential war industry, most of the cannery’s production was sent to troops overseas. The military bought 60% of their 1943 Bartlett pear output alone.
Working at the cannery was celebrated as patriotic. “Unless you pack it,” the business’s many newspaper ads urged recruits, “our boys won’t eat it.” The labor shortage was so critical the cannery recruited men, including Fort Lewis soldiers on leave. Part time workers could even pick their own hours.
Soldiers wrote home from the front about enjoying Olympia Canning company fruit, often mailing labels as proof to relatives working in the plant. Fighter pilot Earl Bach wrote home to his family that he enjoyed a can after the military’s difficult capture of the island of Saipan. The family shared his letter with the Daily Olympian in 1944. “I have never known apples to taste so good in all my life,” he wrote. Other soldiers wrote from Italy, England, and even Cairo.
The Closing of the Olympia Canning Company
But time was not kind to the Olympia cannery. Sloping cement floors made washing away debris easy. A bit too easy, they dumped their waste straight into the bay. The acidic outwash killed fish and damaged nearby boats’ paint. Over the years, the city complained that the cannery filled uptown sewers with debris and lowered the tideline at the Port’s Berth 4 from 35 feet to 27 feet. It was so bad the cannery had to agree to help fund dredging in the late 1930s.
Beyond environmental problems, industry began closing in Olympia during the 1950s as the economy changed. The cannery could not escape these changes. The company decided to sell its ranch in 1956.
The company renewed a 10-year lease for dock space in 1956 but two years later the cannery abruptly ended operations in August, ahead of fall harvest season. The canning business was no longer profitable.
The cannery building was sold to the brothers Roy and A.J. Weiks, who remodeled the main buildings into the Seamart (Yardbirds). This store closed in 1993 and burned down in 1999. The site is now apartments. The Olympia Canning Company, which was once one of the city’s leading industries, is now but a fading memory.
