Getting there Ninety Years Ago

Ninety years ago on April 27, 1922, Hubert Secor launched his bus service to "town." He is seen above with his Pierce Arrow bus in front of the Sweeney Block at the head of the bay. The bus carried 28 passengers plus the mail twice a day to Tacoma for ten years. The fare was 25 cents, plus the ferry toll.  However, no one was ever charged just to ride around Gig Harbor to do errands.

Secor left home about 6 a.m. in order to complete his first run by 8 a.m. so people could get to school and work on time.  He finished his day at 6 p.m. Gig Harbor had no high school before the fall of 1922, so Stadium High School in Tacoma was the nearest school.  The bus ran seven days a week, with Secor the only driver.  He once drove 28 months without a day off.

By 1928, a second bus was added, driven by Orville Hemphill.  He drove his bus from 8 to 8.  Both drivers earned $4.40 a day.  

Besides the free rides around town, Hubert was known to pick up items for housewives who couldn't get into town themselves.  He would take a bit of thread to match, or pick up packages upon request.

Hubert Blaine Secor was born in Longmont, Colorado, in 1904.  His family moved here in 1907.  Hubert went to Stadium High School by taking the steamer Crest each day.  After graduation, he worked at the telephone company in Tacoma, where he met his future wife Mary.

He sold his business to the Tacoma Bus Company in 1931, but continued to drive the route.  By 1934, he was ready for a change.  He and Mary opened the Minterbrook Oyster Company on the Key Peninsula.  In 1964, he was elected the fourth Mayor of Gig Harbor, serving until suffering a stroke in 1969.  He died in 1972 at the age of 80.

Linda McCowen, Historic Photos Editor
© 2012 Harbor History Museum. All rights reserved.

Gig Harbor is 124 years old this week

Dr. Alfred Mark Burnham and his second wife Rachel filed the plat for Gig Harbor on April 19, 1888.  The town extended from their farm near Donkey Creek to the head of the bay, now marked by the Bogue Viewpoint Park on North Harborview.  They had arrived in 1886 after slowly working their way west from Minnesota, finding the harbor a very welcome place to settle.

They quickly became friends with their neighbors and knew it was where they wanted to put down their roots.  Having purchased land from Sam Jeresich, one of the first white settlers, Burnham offered free lots to anyone willing to build a house and paint it white.

Dr. Burnham opened his store at the head of the bay, which had a wide variety of goods to sell as well as a small stage where small plays were performed.  He produced his own newspaper.  As he was a physician, the paper had medical advice and  patent medicine ads.  

The Burnham family is pictured above seated on the porch of their white house near the creek.  At left is son Nick, Biz, Rachel, Alfred, Luella, and Frank.  An unknown neighbor is at right.  Lower left is a portrait of Dr. Burnham and at right is Rachel with her dog Prince.

Dr. Burnham died in 1896 at the age of 72.  Rachel lived until age 88, passing away in 1933.

Linda McCowen, Historic Photo Editor
© 2012 Harbor History Museum. All rights reserved.

Crest Leaving the Harbor

The recent warm spring weather reminds us what a wonderful place Gig Harbor is.  Getting out on the water is a great way to appreciate it whether by rowboat of steamboat.

You can just imagine what a fine day it is as this young girl sets out for a row at the mouth of the harbor.   Suddenly, she hears the familiar chug of a steam engine and sees the Crest gaining on her and decides to drift ashore and watch it pass.  The steamer was headed for Tacoma and Vashon Island in this 1905 photograph.

Talking to Dick Brynestad of Gig Harbor

Dick Brynestad is a happy man. Wouldn't you be happy to live in the place which you always loved, to have five great kids, fourteen grandkids and ten greatgrandkids plus a loving wife of 60 years and lots of things to do? I would.

As a salmon returns to the place where it was born, Dick made a circle and returned to the area where his grandparents settled down back in 1910.

And not only he and his wife, Rosemary, live here, but also four of his children. He loves Gig Harbor and Wollochet Bay full circle from Tacoma, Gig Harbor, Fox Island, Longbranch and back to Gig Harbor - 82 years in this area and occasional trips, 11 to be exact, to the country of his ancestors' origin, Norway.

Click on the pictures to enlarge them

Dick Brynestad, March 2012

Have you ever been to Norway? They say it looks a lot like the Pacific Northwest. This is what the first settlers wrote to their relatives and friends back to Norway: It looks like home! Come over and get some land! And they came. Dick's grandparents, Jens and Maria, made a stop in Minnesota for several years on their way from Norway and then arrived in Cromwell where they bought 5 acres of land and started a farm in 1910.

Timber was heavily harvested by the first settlers on the Kitsap Peninsula such that the land actually became covered by huge stumps.

To remove them, dynamite was used, and what's left was pulled by horses, taken away and burned. Eventually, the land was improved for planting and harvesting tomatoes for the Tacoma market.

Tomatoes grew well on the sunny hills and were a big part of Brynestad family's income. Dick's Dad, Melvin, used to water them carrying a yoke with buckets for hours. He would finish the watering job, tell his father and often hear a reply: 'Well, now do it again!' Tomatoes were placed in wooden boxes nailed together by Melvin and then loaded on a steamboat. The steamboat delivered them to Tacoma where they were sold. Things did not always went as planned. Weather and currents sometimes changed a steamboat's schedule. Consequently, tomatoes were spoiled, and losses occurred.

On the right - home of Jens and Maria Brynestad.

On the left - Hales Passage Scandinavian Lutheran Church

Dick's Grandfather, Jens, passed away on the front porch of his home on the farm playing violin for his family and group of neighbors.

Melvin Brynestad, with his brother and five sisters, grew up on that farm and after his father died, moved with his mother, Maria, to Tacoma.

He used to come back and spend all of his spare time in Cromwell hanging around with other kids, fishing, having bonfires, swimming, etc.

Here, in Cromwell, he met his future wife, Palma. She also lived in Tacoma and used to come over to Cromwell to visit her family friends. The friends' family had a 20-acre farmstead next to Brynestad's.

How did they travel from Tacoma before the bridge was built? By a boat of course. Not a sailboat, but a steamboat and a rowboat!

Daughters to Jens and Maria Brynestad seated in rowboat from left to right:

Julia, Ruth, Cora, Anna with niece Amanda Muri. 

Location: Cromwell beach in front of Hales Passage Scandinavian Lutheran Church

Melvin Brynestad and his wife lived in Tacoma, but he always wanted to build a family cabin for them in Cromwell, the Wollochet Bay area.

He was out of work, as many others, during the Great Depression and couldn't afford to buy all the necessary building materials for the cabin. Fortunately, a work opportunity helped. He had been hired to tear down a house in Tacoma. There were some materials he could use for the construction.

But how to move them from Tacoma to Wollochet Bay? By ferry! What if you can't afford to pay the ferry fare? He loaded the materials on the top of his car, drove it to Tiltow beach, reloaded it there to the rowboat and rowed the materials to their building site at Wollochet Bay.

As you can guess, it wasn't an easy trip. Currents and tides could take boats past Tiltow beach to as far as Point Defiance.

Finally, the cabin was built - originally, on Melvin's brother-in-law's land and then later moved to the adjacent property after Melvin was able to buy it.

Dick Brynestad was born in 1929. From the time he was 18 months old, he has been visiting the Wollochet Bay cabin, which became a part of his life.

All summers and many weekends were spent there the same way as his father did many years ago - playing with local kids, helping grandparents and enjoying the great outdoors.

Four houses on Wollochet Bay belonged to Squally Indians, who were fishermen, and Dick remembers how he and his sister used to play with the Indian kids every summer.

Later, the little cabin was replaced by a house. Melvin Brynestad was a carpenter by trade.

There are many memories about living on Wollochet Bay in Dick and Rosemary's family. All their kids are also attached to this place. The kids of the kids are attached to this place too. There are 6 generations of Brynestad's who have enjoyed and still enjoy the Wollochet Bay scenery, fresh air, majestic sunsets and other pleasures of life in the Wollochet Bay area.

When asked what his favorite thing about Gig Harbor was, Dick replied "I like the slower pace of life and the old Gig Harbor waterfront." He also said his favorite place to eat is the Tides Tavern. "A bowl of clam chowder and a plate of sweet potato fries are our usual meal there."

***

 Tatyana Searcy

Hunting Easter Eggs

Children scatter through City Park on Vernhardson Street in search of Easter Eggs in this Frank Owen Shaw photo dated April 13, 1952.  This was the first Annual Easter Egg Hunt in the park.  Looks like the weather was a bit warmer in 1952!

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.

Spring training!

1916. May Bollen and Geraldine Stinson by the corner of the Lee Stinson house (on Stinson Avenue!). This was May's first year of teaching at Lincoln School - note the Lincoln School baseball uniforms.

 

 

© 2012 Harbor History Museum. All rights reserved.