Gig Harbor lifestyle—what makes it?

• A community of people who call it “home” by choice…not by chance.
• A community with history from diverse areas of Scandinavia and Croatia.
• A community of people who work hard to integrate the needs of the community with nature.
• A semi-rural community ideally located close to urbanized Tacoma, Seattle, Bremerton and Olympia.
• A community with picture-postcard views everywhere—of the majestic Olympics to the west and the omnipresent snowy Mt Rainier to the southeast.
• Yes…the people, the maritime history, the location, the schools, churches, the recreational resources…make the Gig Harbor “lifestyle!”

Discovery of Gig Harbor

Native Americans settled the Gig Harbor Peninsula and Fox Island for thousands of years before Europeans arrived. The groups that inhabited the area were mainly Puyallup, Nisqually, and Steilacoom. Native Americans had permanent settlements in villages along Donkey and Crescent Creeks in Gig Harbor and in Wollochet Bay and Burley Lagoon for fishing and food gathering. Some Native Americans continued to live in the area selling or trading fish and woven baskets to European settlers well into the 1900s.

In 1792, British Captain George Vancouver led the first European exploration of the Puget Sound and, in 1841; American Navy Lieutenant Charles Wilkes explored the entire Puget Sound.

The first European and American settlers came to the Gig Harbor Bay area in 1867 for fishing. With the arrival of the transcontinental railroad to Tacoma in 1887, more people began to settle in the area. In the early days homesteaders settled along the shoreline since much of the inland areas did not have adequate roads and most transportation was through the waterways on boats. Later, inland locations became valuable for farms, ranches, and orchards. The harbor area was developed with docks and wharves to serve the “Mosquito Fleet,” a group of steamers that transported freight, mail and people across the Sound to Tacoma, Logging activity preceded farming that included fruit orchards in the area. Shipbuilding for commercial fishing, car ferries and other craft became an important industry in Gig Harbor.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, passengers, horses, wagons, mail, supplies, logs, timber, fish. crops and bricks were transported in boats and steamers across Puget Sound from the Peninsula to Tacoma. Steamers stopped at major pick-up locations and bays along the shoreline in the Narrows, Wollochet Bay, Hale Passage, Carr Inlet and Henderson Bay. By the 1930’s the steamer transport declined largely due to the convenience of larger ferries and appearance of automobiles on the Peninsula starting in the 1910’s.

The first Narrows Bridge collapsed in 1940, just four months after completion. The second Narrows Bridge was not completed until after World War II…1950. During the intervening years, ferries again transported people and goods between the Peninsula and Tacoma. With the completion of the second Narrows Bridge, the Peninsula began to evolve into a suburban residential community. This growth accelerated from the 1950s through the mid-1990s, due to the growth in the Tacoma, mainland Pierce County and Central Puget Sound economy and the convenient access to Interstate 5 that the bridge and State Route 16 provided.

Today, the area is a mix of small town and suburban neighborhoods interspersed with rural forest and pasturelands.