Gig Harbor, A Century Ago

Three figures walk along Front Street (now North Harborview) at the head of the bay. 

The town of Gig Harbor was formed, thanks to Alfred and Rachel Burnham.   Alfred was a physician with a varied background.  He served in the Civil War as a second assistant surgeon,[1] briefly owned a newspaper in Minnesota[2], cut ties for the Northern Pacific Railroad in Wyoming[3], where he also worked cattle, moved back to Minnesota for a few years before arriving Tacoma in 1884, via Colorado.[4] He and his wife homesteaded 160 acres in the upper right background,[5] and later bought land from the harbor’s three original fishermen, Sam Jerisich, John Farrague and Peter Goldsmith,[6] upon which the couple filed the plat for Gig Harbor on April 28, 1888.[7]  Burnham opened a store, with the long dock, and published his own newspaper promoting elixirs and good health.  Later the building was known as Bay View Hall.  

The white-trimmed building beyond Burnham’s store was W. P. Kendall’s store, later housing I. A. Rust’s Tinker Shop.  These buildings disappeared by the 1930s. The road where the three boys walk was known then as Front Street and now as North Harborview.  It leads around the corner to today’s Harbor History Museum. 

The logs in the foreground are in an active log dump (one of many along Gig Harbor’s shore) where nearby loggers brought their harvest to be towed to mills in Tacoma and elsewhere. The photo was taken from just west of the site of the Prentice shingle mill, which burned down in 1896.[8]  Equipment salvaged from the gutted mill was sold to CO Austin when he opened his own mill in 1909, now the site of the Harbor History Museum.

Across the water to the left is Gig Harbor’s only brickyard,[9] on property owned by John and Josephine Novak.[10]  The brickyard was a failure and the building was remodeled into the Silver Glide Dance Hall by the Novaks’ sons in 1921.[11] This facility had excellent floors for dancing as well as roller skating. Roller skating was a popular pastime early in the new century and skating rinks were common around Puget Sound.  Dances at the Silver Glide usually featured Reuben Berkheimer’s six-piece orchestra.  (He owned the local hardware store.)

Built during the early years of Prohibition, the dance hall became the subject of most of the scandalous talk of the town due to the rowdiness caused by the mixing of young people and bootleg whisky.  Drinking and carousing could last until 5 AM.[12]  Young ladies were warned that they shouldn’t leave a dance at the Silver Glide and reappear during the evening, as it would signal a bad reputation.

By 1925, the county banned dances there, and the fun moved out to Horseshoe Lake on the Key Peninsula.  The building continued to be used for less troublesome events, including the Novaks’ Golden Wedding Anniversary party in 1932.  After one last community dance hosted by the Crescent Valley PTA in January, 1933,[13] the Novaks’ sons-in-law Tony and Andrew Gilich dismantled the hall, salvaging some of the lumber which they used to build the family netshed.[14]  Located just out of this photo (to the left, at the base of Clay Hill), it is still a working netshed owned by Andy Blair and Dick Moller.


Linda McCowen, Historic Photo Editor

© 2012 Harbor History Museum. All rights reserved.

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[1] U.S. Department of the Interior National Park Service’s The Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System, Soldiers and Sailors Database.

[2] History of Freeborn County Minnesota, compiled by Franklyn Curtiss-wedge, publisher H. C. Cooper Jr., & Co., Chicago, Ill., 1911, page 189, “Dr. A. M. Burnham, the proprietor, of Itasca, at which place the post office had been named Freeborn Springs, saw the necessity for a newspaper to present the claims of that village to the votes of the citizens, and accordingly started a newspaper, with Isaac Botsford as editor. The paper was issued August 21, 1860, and continued for thirteen numbers.”

[3]Dr. A. M. Burnham’s obituary, Freeborn County Standard, July 22, 1896, “He spent some time in Wyoming, where he had a sawmill, having extensive contracts with the Union Pacific railroad.”

[4] Freeborn County Standard, April 9, 1884, “Dr. Burnham has left Colorado and gone to new Tacoma, Washington Territory.”

[5] Bureau of Land Management Serial Patent, Document number 3809, BLM Serial Number WASAA 080385, Issue Date 9-28-1891

[6] Warranty Deed dated April 24, 1886, Pierce County Auditor’s office, Book 20 Deeds, Page 183, and Quit Claim Deed dated August 6, 1887, Pierce County Auditor’s office, Book 22 Deeds, Page 375

[7] Original Gig Harbor plat record in the Pierce County Auditor’s office.

[8] The Mississippi Valley Lumberman, July 10, 1896, “The Prentice shingle mill at Gig Harbor, Wash., was recently destroyed by fire.”

[9] The Gig Harbor Clay Company 1907-1910, by Greg Spadoni.

[10] Land lease agreement dated May 9, 1907, recorded at the Pierce County Auditor’s office on July 22, 1907, in volume 309 of Deeds, page 400.

[11] Peninsula Gateway, early 1921 (issue date unknown)

[12] Peninsula Gateway, September 19, 1924

[13] Advertising poster at the Washington State Historical Society, http://www.washingtonhistory.org/collections/item.aspx?irn=55782&record=1

[14] City of Gig Harbor web page on the Gilich netshed, “The netshed was built in 1933 and owned by Tony Gilich … according to Don Gilich, the lumber used to build the shed was salvaged from the local “Silver Glide” dance hall.”

https://www.cityofgigharbor.net/490/Gilich-Netshed

Linda McCowen, Historic Photo Editor

© 2012 Harbor History Museum. All rights reserved.