Olympia Harbor Days

Get ready to set sail into an unforgettable weekend at the Olympia Harbor Days Festival! This award-winning, free, and family-friendly event is the perfect way to bid farewell to summer. Held every Labor Day Weekend in Olympia, Washington, this maritime extravaganza offers a delightful mix of history, culture, and fun for all ages.

Sail Into the Action: On the Water

At the heart of Olympia Harbor Days are the vintage tugboats of the Puget Sound, proudly showcased in a walk-aboard show at the docks. Whether you're a maritime enthusiast or just curious, you'll love exploring these historic vessels up close. And don’t miss the thrilling tugboat races in the bay!

But that's just the start—visitors can also marvel at tall ships, steamships, tribal canoes, and even modern small watercraft. Want more? Hop on a harbor cruise or sail Budd Bay for an adventure on the water that will make your weekend truly memorable.

Landlubbers’ Delight: On the Shore

There’s plenty to enjoy on land too! With over 300 things to see and do, the festival promises endless entertainment. Feast on delicious local food, dance to live music, and browse through the works of talented artisans. The event is packed with nautical and marine-themed attractions, hands-on activities, and educational experiences that dive into Olympia’s tugboat heritage, tribal history, and the working waterfront with Port of Olympia tours.

This is a family-friendly festival like no other—so bring the kids! Let them unleash their imaginations with activities like sand carving, building a LEGO harbor, or meeting dancing pirates. The little ones might even catch the dream of working on the water or sailing the world someday.

Getting There

Olympia Harbor Days is conveniently located on the waterfront in downtown Olympia. If you’re driving, free parking is available at Market St & Marine Drive, courtesy of the Port of Olympia. But why not make your trip even easier by riding the bus? Check out Intercity Transit for routes and schedules.

Click here for a full Olympia Harbor Days Map.

Back before there were cell phones and radio communications, skippers and captains of the large ships moving cargo (and people) into the Port of Olympia relied on tugboats to navigate them into harbor. Spotters would catch site of the tall ships and let the skippers of steam-driven tugboats know that sheep needed to be brought into port. Smart tugboat skippers would already be set to go, tossing their lines and leaving the docks to race out to intercept the ships. Usually, the first tug to reach the ship got the job of bringing her into port. The start of tugboat racing was born.

Now a major Puget Sound maritime festival, Olympia Harbor Days began in 1974 as a small, one-day gathering of historic vessels at the Port of Olympia marine terminal. The informal, end-of-summer event was organized by the newly-formed Olympia-South Sound Maritime Chapter (OSSMC) of the State Capital Historical Association, which operated the State Capital Museum. The OSSMC’s founders were Olympia resident and regionally-known maritime historian Gordon Newell, local boat builder Albert Giles, and State Capitol Museum curator Patrick Haskett. A year later, in 1975, the OSSMC’s Harbor Day event focused on vintage tugboats with addition of the first tugboat race in the South Sound. This marked a return of traditional tug racing in Puget Sound that had ended 20 years earlier in Seattle.

In 1978, a separate downtown arts and crafts event, Harborfair, was inaugurated as a companion shore-side event. Organized by downtown merchant Marti Galbreath, Harborfair included arts, crafts and food vendors, and entertainment acts. Harbor Days and Harborfair continued as coordinated but separately-organized events through 1983 when they were co-sponsored by the OSSMC, City of Olympia, Port of Olympia, and the Olympia Downtown Development Association. The two events merged under the Olympia Harbor Days name starting in 1984, with the same primary co-sponsors.