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Can you identify this photograph?

Recently, the Tumwater Historical Association donated this framed photo to the Schmidt House. It shows a group of girls working in a garden. The girls are for the most part dressed alike, with white blouses, dark skirts, ties and bonnets. To the left stands a man holding a garden tool and a bunch of beets or radishes. The title of the photo is merely “Tumwater Countryside, circa 1900. Courtesy Olympia Brewing Company.”

Louis Schmidt Builds the Original Capital Brewery

Are you old enough to remember the days of radio and early television newscasts when the headlines were introduced with the phrase, “Dateline!”? That was a prevalent way of getting the viewer’s or listener’s attention for the next story. News documentaries and newsreels in the theaters often used that as part of their presentation. I’d like to do that here as we go back to the very beginnings of the brewery in Tumwater when the Schmidt brothers, Leopold and Louis, began work
on the Capital Brewing Company at the foot of the Deschutes falls. The Schmidts had purchased five acres of

The Birth of a Slogan–the Story of “It’s the Water”

The following story first appeared in the August 1951 issue of “It’s the Water News,” the employee newsletter of the Olympia Brewing Company in Tumwater, Washington.

The author of this article was Frank Kenney, who was secretary of OBC before prohibition. In 1951, a commemorative dinner was given by the management at the Governor Hotel, and Frank was presented with a 50-year pin.

I remember the day as distinctly as if it were yesterday. Forty-nine years ago. 1902. I had been thinking for sometime about an advertising aid for our beer. I had decided on this particular morning to talk about it to Leopold Schmidt, founder of the Olympia Brewing Company.