It rained two inches, here, last Friday. That's not uncommon for Olalla which receives 54 inches of rain a year. Olalla is part of the Olympic Peninsula rain forest a living breathing, vibrant, full of life ecosystem, with moss dripping from trees and diverse vegetation. Alder, salal, berry bushes, scrub create a line of site that disappears into far away misty woods on a rainy day like last Friday.

Olalla was one of the last areas settled around the Puget Sound. The original settlers who carved a life out of this wet wilderness left a legacy of logging and strawberry farms through the first half of the twentieth century. Today Olalla is dotted with farm land, horses and dense areas of forest never cleared, except for selective logging efforts of the earlier part of the twentieth century. You can let your dog run without a leash in Olalla. People are private here and they respect each other's rights.

Patriotism swept the country in the forties and right up the road from Olalla was Bremerton, a center for naval activity employing many of its residents. The Olalla Grange was established in 1947 in the wake of this patriotism. Many of the hard work values are reflected in some of it's long term residents, several who grew up here. Their remarkable accomplishments of rallying a community together to build a community organization like the Grange and its buildings is fast becomming a lost art.

It's hard to describe what draws people together in a fraternal organization to make a commitment to the hard work and projects for the community. Over the years the Olalla Grange members picked brush to raise funds, held auctions and now the mainstay is bingo, a weekly event painted in pure americana.

The values of our American heritage can be seen in the Olalla Grange. The Grange is an excellent organization for community interaction and is traditionally a good starting point for developing political skills.

The Olalla Grange is located at 7554 Fragaria Rd SE in Olalla. Monthly meetings are held on the fourth Friday of the month. It's located in a wooded setting circa summer camp 1972. Ten twenty people attend meetings with local and personal politics.