Our gathering place

There's been a store on this corner since 1884

Olalla was once as big as Port Orchard: a working port on Colvos Passage with a hotel over the water, a sawmill, a shingle mill and a pool hall. Nearly all of it is gone. The store is still here, and we think the story is worth keeping.

The timelineThe muralsThe museumStarvation HeightsThe audio tour
Colorized photo of a tug of war in the street, with flags on the store porch and a crowd watching
Tug of war downtown, flags on the porch. [YEAR]

The names over the door

  1. The white two-story Charles F. Nelson General Merchandise store with a delivery truck and cars out frontCharles F. Nelson General MerchandiseFrom 1904
  2. Pearson's Grocery and General MerchandiseAfter the 1920s fire
  3. Greggersen's, a low gabled building with a script sign, and 1940s cars parked out frontGreggersen's MarketThrough the 1950s
  4. The front of Al's with its big script sign, flags along the gable and neon beer signs in the windowsAl's1959 to 2021
  5. The Olalla Bay Market storefront by day, bright pool floats hung around the door and the bay behindOlalla Bay Market & Landing2023 to now

A port before it was a place to park

Traders were doing business here by the 1860s, because Olalla has something most of the Kitsap shoreline doesn't: a gentle beach instead of a bluff. Norwegian and other Scandinavian immigrants settled in, saying it looked like home. Old town grew up around the lagoon, much of it built on piers, and the steamers of the Mosquito Fleet kept people, freight and gossip moving up and down the Sound.

By the end of the 19th century the old-growth forest had been logged off and the land was bare. Settlers dynamited the stumps and planted strawberries and vegetables. Logging, farming and boat building were king.

Then the Narrows Bridge made the boats unnecessary, and Olalla went quiet. We like it that way, mostly.

Old postcard captioned General View, Olalla, Wash., showing wooden buildings on piers along the shore with logged hills behind
Old town on its piers, with the hills logged bare behind. [YEAR]
Children crouched over a game of marbles in a dirt street, with a crowd, a wagon and wooden buildings behind them
Marbles in the street downtown. [YEAR]

One corner, 140 years

The port years

  1. 1860sTrade begins on the bay, thanks to easy saltwater access and a beach you can land on.
  2. 1884A store opens on this corner. There has been one here ever since.
  3. 1904Charles F. Nelson General Merchandise. A simple wooden building, with the post office alongside.
  4. 1908The post office building goes up next door. Today it's the Landing.
  5. 1911An English heiress dies at Dr. Linda Hazzard's sanitarium up the hill, and for the only time in its history Olalla makes world news.
  6. 1920sFire destroys most of old town. The store is rebuilt as Pearson's Grocery and General Merchandise, and later becomes Greggersen's Market.
  7. 1934On October 21 a storm pins the steamer Virginia V against the Olalla dock and wrecks her upper decks. She was built just south of here, and she still sails, the last of the Mosquito Fleet.

The Al's years

  1. 1950sA second fire takes Greggersen's. Two fires were enough: the store that reopens in 1955 is made of concrete. It's the building we're in today.
  2. 1959Al's. Al Robbecke's butcher counter, a full grocery, and a morning coffee crowd trading the latest gossip.
  3. [YEAR]Gas pumps out front. [Add the gas station years and a line about them.]
  4. 1992Al hands the store to his son, John Robbecke.

The comeback

  1. 2021The store has closed. The Olsen family, nearly thirty years in Olalla, buys it, the old post office and the waterfront to bring them back as a gathering place.
  2. 2022The Landing opens in July with a meeting room and a one-room museum. Then a fire during the remodel sets the market back. Olalla answers with a fundraiser and a cornhole tournament, and the work goes on, much of it done by volunteers.
  3. 2023The doors open in April as Olalla Bay Market & Landing.
Old postcard of a two-story wooden building captioned Store and Post Office, Olalla, Wash.
Store and post office. [YEAR]
Black and white photo of the store with early automobiles parked out front and a Mobiloil sign on the shed next door
Motor cars out front, Mobiloil next door. [YEAR]

Look up from your pizza

We painted the history onto the walls so nobody could miss it. [One or two sentences on the murals: who painted them, when, and why.] Next time you're in, take a lap.

[Mural title or subject][Where to find it, and the story it tells.]
[Mural title or subject][Where to find it, and the story it tells.]
[Mural title or subject][Where to find it, and the story it tells.]

The smallest museum you'll ever spend an hour in

Next door, in the 1908 post office we now call the Landing, one room holds Gregg Olsen's collection of Olalla memorabilia. There are glass cases of period advertising, portraits of the storekeepers who came before us, and the oak hand cart the store's first owners used.

One wall belongs to Starvation Heights. It is as strange as you've heard.

Admission FreeOpen [MUSEUM HOURS]Where The Landing, next door
Cover of Starvation Heights by Gregg Olsen: a woman's face fading into a stand of fir trees

Get ready for your treatment

Starvation Heights

Only once has Olalla held the world's attention. Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard ran a sanitarium in the woods up the hill where the cure for everything was fasting, and wealthy patients starved to death in her care. After an English heiress died in 1911, Hazzard was tried and convicted.

Gregg Olsen wrote the book, which Washington's Secretary of State honored for its contribution to state history. Signed copies are by the register, and one wall of the museum is given over to the story.

Read the Starvation Heights story

Three more things to know about Olalla

A hand holding a pile of ripe strawberries over the rows of a u-pick field

Olalla means berries

The name is the Salishan and Chinook Jargon word for berry. Once the forest was gone, the cleared land filled with strawberry fields, and by the 1960s Olalla was throwing Strawberry Festivals. There are still u-pick berries nearby. Yes, that's why there's a strawberry on the sign.

Passengers crowd the bow of the Virginia II, a small white Mosquito Fleet steamer

The Mosquito Fleet

Before the bridges, small steamers like the Virginia II linked every port on the Sound. Her successor the Virginia V, the last one still working, was built just south of here near Maplewood and nearly ended her career against our dock in the storm of 1934. The pilings north of the beach are what's left of old town.

Plungers leaping off the Olalla dock into the bay while a crowd watches from the railing

The original Polar Bear Plunge

Every New Year's Day, people jump into the cold water of Olalla Bay on purpose. We don't run it, but we do hand out the official certificates.

Still standing up the hill, and among the oldest working buildings in South Kitsap:Olalla Community Club, built around 1906Olalla Bible Church, built around 1910

Take the audio tour

Five short stops around town, each a minute or three. Play them here, or walk the route with the map in your pocket.

Open the tour map
  1. 1Olalla, our kind of town1:22
  2. 2Starvation Heights3:03
  3. 3The Mosquito Fleet1:06
  4. 4The Clubhouse1:38
  5. 5Olalla Bay Market & Landing0:59

Got an old Olalla photo in a shoebox?

Family stories, postcards, a receipt from Al's. The museum is always collecting, and we'd love to see what you have.

Email us about it