Looking Back’s theme for 2025 features Thurston County area photographers, artists, and their subjects. In 2005, historian Lynn Erickson and artist Robert Chamberlain collaborated to produce a series of watercolors called Sylvester’s Window. This watercolor (cropped from the original) shows the Grand Parade of Progress in 1950, celebrating Olympia’s Centennial. The artist whimsically included himself as a young man chatting with Margaret McKenny by the grandstand. Image selected and captioned by Deborah Ross on behalf of the Olympia Historical Society and Bigelow House Museum, https://olympiahistory.org.
Courtesy Olympia Historical Society and Bigelow House Museum (cropped image from Sylvester’s Window project)