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Like any town, Hoquiam City, Washington started simple. In the 1850’s white settlers found its estuary and settled on its banks with good lumber on their sites and since then just like the river it was named after the logging camp grew into a town that was always “hungry for wood”. As it grew and the a few of the founders grew rich and famed in their own right and efforts, the City sought a marker for their achievements, one that the common folk, the lumberjacks, the shop keepers and their families can easily identify with and use to forget if just for a moment their daily toils and chores to earn a living and be alive in the truest sense of the word.

The stadium opened its shingled external walls in 1938. The all-wood stadium seemed to be a daunting task if it was done by others but for this city that wood built from the ground up there was really no other building material that will share and display to the nation and to the world their abundance and mastery of lumber. It has been and still is a logging town, established in the 1850’s the term “Hoquiam” translates from Native American tongue as “hungry for wood” for the towns namesake the river Hoquiam had this natural propensity to gather driftwood.

In the early 1930’s the city submitted their plans and applied for a civil works administration grant for their fabulous and monumental stadium. The city got the grant by 1932, construction was a bit delayed for several years but in 1938 it had enough momentum and groundbreaking started immediately thereafter for the all-wood Olympic stadium.

The stadium officially opened for use by the public on November 24, 1938 with the construction itself not taking more than a year from start to finish and this is their take on things much like how the lumber industry takes time to let trees grow for decades, to agree that everything is right or satisfactory and when the time has come it takes but a moment to finish what took decades or even more than a century to nurture and give life to, such are the circumstances there, the patience and understanding of a tree farmer that completes his task as a lumberjack with a razor sharp axe.

In 2005, again after much time has passed a local man, Congressman Norm Dicks prodded by his community constituents was able to secure through request a renovation grant that was awarded through the “Save America’s Treasures” program. The good Congressman also supported the State Historic Preservation Office request to recognize the stadium as a National Registry of Historical Places grantee, which the old stadium got in 2006.

The Olympic stadium is one of the more extraordinarily built stadiums in the area with its truncated U-shaped design and angled corners, with one of its portions facing to the east to shelter players and fans alike from wind and rain from the Pacific. The outside is covered with cedar shingle sidings and the L shaped grandstand is sheltered from top to bottom which extends all the way to the right and going out into the outfield. The wood used is of old-growth fir heavy-timber frame with most of the trees felled maybe more than 100 years old. The seats are of course also made of wood and are in surprisingly good shape after sitting and bearing the weight of those countless who went by its entrances.

The Olympic stadium is presently home to the semi-professional football team the Grays Harbor Bearcats. In the 1990’s the historic stadium was the base of operations for the now defunct Grays Harbor Gulls of the independent Western baseball League. This is testament to the resilience of the stadium and its continued contribution to the prestige and honor of the town and its people.

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.

Wade Entezar finds the Hoquiam Olympic Stadium, A symbol of Hoquiam’s sense of camaraderie!