You could say that Williams-Olson is a park more than a century in the making.
The namesake clan's ties to the property overlooking Little Manzanita Bay date to the late 19th century, bonds strengthened through generations as a homestead farm, summer retreat and then a family home before its purchase for public use.
Four generations of Williams-Olsons gathered this month to formally dedicate the park bearing their family name, and to remember the life of Carl Williams, a beloved educator who, with wife Lydia, was the last to raise a family there.
Dedication of the quiet shoreline park (at the end of Williams Lane, off Koura Road) completes a years-long effort to transform the park. Gifts through the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation funded the renovation, largely completed in 2025 with the final interpretive touches just added this month.
The 5-acre uplands feature a spacious picnic shelter with dramatic flying gables, rolling grounds with heirloom trees and a walking trail meandering up into a wooded ravine. The lawn slopes down to a viewpoint bench – you can see Keyport and the Agate Pass Bridge north across the water – and a winding path down to 400 feet of public shoreline.
Interpretive displays at the shelter trace the Williams-Olson family history. The family dinner bell is ensconced on a concrete plinth. Near the park entrance: a modest pickleball court (BYO net), another vestige of the Williams family tenure.
"Parks can be these grand places with vast geologic history, like Yosemite Falls, or they can be smaller but deeply meaningful spaces like this one," said Mary Meier, Parks & Trails Foundation executive director. "What makes this park special is not only its beauty, but the people and the stories that will endure here."
"There is nostalgia here – the dinner bell, the gatherings, the rhythms of everyday life that are both ordinary and extraordinary."
Family ties
Williams‑Olson Park traces its namesake history to 1890, when Swedish immigrants John Olson and Karin Persson Olson settled 30 sloping acres above Manzanita Bay, near what is now Koura Road.
Originally planning to farm, they instead raised chickens and eggs, supplying Seattle markets by mosquito‑fleet boat—or, when necessary, by John Olson rowing his skiff around Bainbridge Island and across Puget Sound.
Their daughter Walborg Amelia Olson arrived as a toddler, and with her sister Olga helped shape the homestead. They gathered stones for the river‑rock fireplace at the family home known as "Grammy's house," perched on the north slope overlooking the bay.
The property remained in the extended Olson and Williams families for generations. Walborg ("Grammy") married Urban Williams in 1915, while sister Olga became a Manzanita School teacher and ran the Hillcrest Lending Library from her home.
Nearby relatives built a red Victorian farmhouse in the 1890s, later selling their property to J. Vernon Williams, who—with his wife Malvina Hitchcock Williams—expanded family holdings to roughly 60 acres. Vernon practiced law in Seattle and founded the firm Riddell Williams.
In 1958, the family added a Pan‑Abode cabin and bunkhouse, modular "kit" buildings popular at the time that could be built without using nails.
The next chapter began in 1970, when Carl Williams, Vernon's son, married Lydia in 1975 and together they raised a family there. Carl died in 2009 at age 59.
The waterfront portion was purchased for public use through the City of Bainbridge Island's Open Space program. It was later transferred to the Bainbridge Island Metro Park & Recreation District, becoming Williams‑Olson Park.
The Pan-Abode buildings were disassembled, and the Lincoln log-like components reconstituted into three cabins at Fay Bainbridge Park.
Fundraising for the park renovation began with a family picnic at Williams-Olson Park in 2018, and about 60 family members returned for the dedication.
Francie Williams thanked the Parks & Trails Foundation, Bainbridge Metro Parks and the City for their part in making the park a reality.
"This has always been a place for friends and family to enjoy the water, clams, blackberries, plums, the woods, and even pickleball. Quietly, we believe this may be the second-oldest pickleball court in the country," Williams said. "When we made the difficult decision to sell, we wanted this spot to be available to many.
"We are so happy to honor Carl because he loved this place so much. We're also honoring the generations before us and celebrating the generations who will continue to feel the magic here."
The Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation acknowledges that William-Olson Park is within the ancestral territory of the "People of the Clear Salt Water" (Suquamish People).
