Early in 1889 it became apparent that if the teritorial capital of Olympia was to be named the capital city when Washington was granted statehood, an all-out campaign would have to be organized. The editor of The Washington Standard realized his weekly newspaper would not be sufficient to carry out the campaign city officials had organized. Thus The Evening Olympian came into being to lead the fight to preserve Olympia's status as capital city.

The Washington Standard, a weekly paper started November 17, 1860 moved into a new building in 1865 at the corner of Second and Washington streets. On February 16, 1889 it became a daily paper called The Daily Olympian and occupied this building until 1906 when it merged with the Morning Olympian.

First home of the Morning Olympian still stand at Legion Way and Washington.

The Olympian and The Daily Recorder merged in 1928 when they moved into this new building at the corner of State and Capitol Way.
On July 1, 1971, Gannett Company, Inc. acquired The Daily Olympian as a part of Federated Publications. The name was shortened to The Olympian in February, 1982.

With completion of its new building, The Olympian began publishing as an offset newspaper on May 1, 1972.

In September of 2005, The Olympian was traded by Gannett Company, Inc., along with the Bellingham and Boise newspapers, to Knight Ridder in exchange for the Tallahassee Democrat. Nine months later, Knight Ridder was purchased by The McClatchy Company.

Today, The Olympian has a newly remodeled building. Overall, we have increased our physical size to over 50,000 square feet by adding nearly 14,000 square feet of new space and have completely remodeled the existing building, tying it in seamlessly with the new. In addition, we have upgraded our technology, new newspaper packaging equipment and added press color capacity.