Looking Back’s theme for 2025 featured Thurston County area photographers, artists, and their subjects. Charles M. Moore arrived in Washington Territory with his family in 1877 and was a merchant in downtown Olympia. When photographic technology became widely available to nonprofessionals in the late 19th century, Moore captured local people and places as an amateur “Kodaker.”
photo around 1900, courtesy State Capital Museum Collection, Washington State Historical Society, catalog C2018.0.78
Text © Deborah Ross and The Olympian 2025