While a city ages, it has to change too, to avert stalling out, fading away. Time and again a township has been deep-rooted in a spot to meet some specific cultural or economic prerequisite, and if those days lapse, the township has to change its game. Nevertheless the way a city changes is a matter well worth paying awareness to, for it says a lot about the changes in our humanity at large.

A first-class model of this evolution is seen in the Washington town of Hoquiam. Hoquiam was formerly a logging township, a chronicle it recalls with a yearly event — Loggers’ Playday. And in the fall there is a logging competition and a parade to further remind the people how they got here. So while it’s relevant to continue and celebrate a township’s past, it’s also necessary, sometimes, to formulate new traditions.

Take, for illustration, the Hoquiam waterfront. The stretch of river in Hoquiam’s downtown hasn’t been much used since the 1980s. Now that some development has taken an involvement in it, nearby’s a possibility for it to become a much further colorful and focal chunk of the local society. Hoquiam can’t just rely on logging contests until the end of time — there’s got to be more to a municipality’s life than that.

The Hoquiam waterfront hasn’t seen much action since its heyday in the 1980s, but now there is development interest, and so the community has to think seriously about what kind of town it may want to become. Development is obviously no guarantee of success, nor will it necessarily turn Hoquiam into a metropolis, but decisions need to be made collectively, because of course growth isn’t free — tax money is the ruche fertilizer for civic growth.

There’s alternative reason for Hoquiam to grow its waterfront. There’s a variety of long-running rivalry with its bigger neighbor to the east, the metropolitan of Aberdeen. Bigger towns tend to develop the enhanced opportunities, often more money from the state, than the smaller city. Like the older sibling who gets all the new things while the little sister has to play with old toys. But so if Hoquiam thinks about what it wants to become and applies that idea in creating a superb downtown waterfront, it can display to that next-door neighbor how good a town can be.

A town’s history is of great consequence, but so is its coming direction. It’s also valuable to reach out to new opportunities. Hoquiam, like many modest towns, needs to be fearless in embracing its possibilities for that yet to come — it can keep its history yet as it evolves.

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