‘Finding the Center’ at the KP History Museum

A hundred years ago, Elmer Olson, son of pioneer settler Andrew Olson, and his neighbor and logging business partner Alden (Aldie) Vissell had a vision for the future. They imagined a hub where the new Gig Harbor-Longbranch highway, today’s Key Peninsula Highway, crossed the old road between Vaughn and Glencove. Realizing that automobile travel was the way of the future, they established a commercial center at the crossroads, the first community of its kind on the remote peninsula.

“The roads, and the coming of the automobile to the Key Peninsula, were the reason Key Center was built. The automobile was clearly replacing the steamers of the mosquito fleet,” said Bart Wolfe, who created the exhibit with fellow Key Peninsula Historical Society board member Joseph Pentheroudakis.

Olson and Vissell began implementing their plans in the late 1920s on parcels they each owned in what is now Key Center. By the time the business center officially opened in 1932, it included a grocery, a hardware store and lumber yard, a coffee shop, a barbershop, a radio store, and a gas station. Key Center was conceived as a marketplace: There was no school, no church, no community center, and, until 2001, no post office.

The birth of that marketplace and how it went on to become the heart of the peninsula is the subject of the 2025 exhibition at the KPHS museum in Vaughn.

Archival photos and newspaper articles bring the story to life, and montages of advertisements from early editions of the Key Peninsula News indirectly trace the history of Key Center’s businesses.

The exhibit pivots on the fire of Feb. 4, 1970, that destroyed Key Center’s anchors, the grocery and hardware stores. The fire left the community in shock, but it also catalyzed Key Center’s continued growth. By 1971, a new shopping center was built, with a new hardware store — now Capitol Lumber — and a grocery that soon became Walt’s Fine Foods, now Key IGA. A new fire station and headquarters followed in 1973, and in 1977, the iconic Key Center Corral was built, home in the decades since to a host of small businesses. More businesses and organizations soon called Key Center home.

The exhibition includes a community participation feature, encouraging visitors to document their memories and thoughts about Key Center and its future. “Where is Key Center going? Planning these things takes a long time,” Wolfe said. “We need people with a vision like Elmer and Aldie in 1925.”

“Finding the Center: The Story of Key Center” will be up until the end of November. The museum is open to the public from 1 to 4 p.m. on Tuesdays and Saturdays and by appointment.