Over the years there was horse racing, buggy racing, car racing, grandstands, betting, sweating and hollering- and that was just at the Glenbrook Park Racetrack. It was the county fairgrounds; there were Nevada City vs. Grass Valley football games, hotly contested baseball games (who wouldn't want to see The Fertilizer Giants take on the Clabbermilk Cubs?) and lavish picnics in the pines. Is it a typical Labor Day Weekend Community Picnic in the 1920s? Then you dont want to miss the Fat Womens Race, where the winner will go home with one hundred pounds of flour! Although the article fails to describe the criteria for entry, we can just imagine the self-confidence it took to enter this spectacle at one of the biggest social events of the year. There was also a Fattest Baby Contest with a first-prize of $2.50, so it appears getting plenty to eat was something of a theme. If the weather was good, everyone wanted to be at the park, first called Glenbrook and later, Olympia.

Beginning in the late 1890s, there was also Lake Olympia, which was clearly an amazing community treasure! This man-made, approximately twelve-acre lake was the place to sun and swim and boat and dive for several decades. Despite being public and not overly deep, this was no dip in the Ganges- old-timers say its inflow of spring water kept the lake clean, clear and cool even during the hottest days of summer. And that comes in handy when your wearing a rented, wool, full-body suit that weighs twenty pounds when wet! There are postcards from the 1920s through the 1940s showing plenty of happy swimmers at Lake Olympia and locals recall taking swimming lessons from Frank Johnson, the one-armed lifeguard. There was a four-tiered high-dive tower and rings to swing out over the water for feats of daring-do, along with canoes and row boats offering quiet pleasure for the more reserved. The lake had campgrounds and cabins, a bath house, a beach, a restaurant, a soda fountain and a bar. Speaking of the bar, which did offer hard liquor, I was unable to find a description of how Prohibition was handled at the lake but there is a mention of a secret slot machine that you could play if you knew the right people.

There was even an island in the lake, accessible by a 200-foot-long raised walkway, where a pavilion was built circa 1912 which housed a bandstand and a dance floor mounted on coil springs. Descriptions of the floor moving in response to up to 250 dancers doing the Foxtrot or Waltz or Swing while lively Big Bands like Lionel Hampton's played can make a person feel like they have missed out on something special. No wonder several articles make reference to people remembering falling in love at Lake Olympia. Watch out for those soldiers from Camp Beale, looking so dashing in their uniforms, you local boys don�t stand a chance.

Just getting to the park sounds like a treat in itself. Transportation by horse was first of course, but in 1887 the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad established a stop at Glenbrook Park, which bolstered the popularity of the destination with visitors from farther afield. Then, in 1901, the Nevada County Traction Company began operating streetcars between Grass Valley and Nevada City, with service as often as every fifteen minutes on days when big events were happening. Their coaches were thirty-two feet long and held forty-four passengers when weather permitted twelve to ride outside. Imagine the fun of riding with a group of friends and neighbors on your way to the annual Miners Union Picnic!

The Miners Union Picnic was surely one of the biggest days of the year, so naturally it had to happen at Lake Olympia. The mines were the engine that made the economy run and they were so important and productive that they operated 364 days of the year. They might not close for Christmas but everything stopped for the Miners Picnic. There was no holding back on the food, the beer or the friendly competition! There were mucking and drilling contests, swimming and diving contests, tugs o war and, of course, hard-fought Cornish wrestling matches, where contestants wore jackets made for grabbing and pulling and the goal was to throw your opponent on his back. As vibrant community celebrations go, there was no topping this one.

While not all points of history are consistent among the articles, the general story of the Glenbrook Basin appears to be as follows. As a naturally open and level area, the basin always provided an inviting setting for horse racing. We do know that by the 1860s the track had been built and that it was improved over time to become a beautiful, three-quarter mile oval with horse barns and two huge grandstands that easily seated hundreds of people from the look of things in vintage photographs. Among the printed materials there are reproductions of news reports and advertisements dated as far back as one from 1867, touting the Fourth of July harness, hurdle, trotting and running races for horses at Glenbrook Racetrack. And theres another one from 1887 describing the first-ever electrically-lit nighttime horse racing to be held over a weekend in September. In it, the promoter promises that there will be entertainment for the entire family and that the best of order will be maintained. Do I detect a hint of previous rowdiness? In 1900, auto racing began at the track and then the story becomes cryptic. One piece notes that auto racing came to an end during WWI and that the track was abandoned. No explanation for the demise of racing is described elsewhere among these documents. Those grandstands were very large to be left unused. My guess that they became unsafe and were torn down for the lumber is just speculation. Does anyone out there know the rest of the story?

With regard to the lake, the southeast portion of the basin had always been low-lying and marshy so sometime during the late 1890s, some unnamed but enterprising persons decided to create a lake by damming Little Wolf Creek. The water from the creek and adjacent springs is said to have quickly created a lake estimated at between ten and fifteen acres. From that beginning, and over the next forty-five years, a series of owners imagined, built and rebuilt all of the buildings and features that made the lake a magnet for summer fun for generations of people in the region. Styles in swimsuits and dance bands came and went but Lake Olympia remained the place everyone wanted to go. For a good, long while anyway.

So we have arrived at the point of, What happened? Once you have seen the pictures and heard the stories it is hard to imagine that such a special place would not be preserved and protected. But its downfall did not happen suddenly- it appears it was just allowed to slowly slip away. Along the way there are mentions of challenges in making enough money, particularly during the 1940s. At that point, people cite competition for entertainment-seekers from movie houses, bowling alleys and roadhouses that stayed open all night and offered dancing for free. It is noted that more people had cars, roads were improving and people travelled more widely for their fun. One superficially amusing observation is that there were frequent fistfights, often of a Grass Valley vs. Nevada City variety, which resulted in the loser being tossed over the railing and into the lake. This was dealt with by a staff member whose job was retrieval by row boat but it might also give a clue as to why some people were feeling less than comfortable at the dance pavilion. As dance bands became unaffordable, the dance floor was converted to a roller skating rink, which helped for a short while.

Meanwhile, as the county's population grew there was increasing pressure for commercial development in Glenbrook Basin. Land that was easy to build on was in demand and the location between the two towns highly desirable. By the late 1950s, the dam which held the lake had washed out twice, snow had collapsed the bathhouse and the skating rink, in 1958, burned to the ground. Things were not going well for Lake Olympia. Worst of all, sloppy management of septic systems from surrounding properties allowed sewage to drain into the lake, ruining its use. Apparently there was no force of public will or designated agency with resources to save it, so it was allowed to return to an undesirable marsh, polluted at that. In the mid-1970s development of what has become the Glenbrook Plaza Shopping Center began and it has been a busy center of commerce ever since. May I inject a bit of a sigh here? Are there other unique and irreplaceable natural or cultural features of our region that we should be keeping an eye on? It seems to be a question worth considering for the future, now that weve spent a little time imagining a remarkable place that is so thoroughly of the past.