History of My Home Town and State

When I was in high school I took a class in Washington State history. It was a required class to graduate from high school. I found it quite interesting at the time knowing about how Washington became a state.  Now I have forgotten most of what I learned then.

Back in 1889 became the 42^nd state in the United States. Prior to becoming a state it was part of the Oregon Territory. Explorers Lewis and Clark came this way in the early 1800s. Also Captain Vancouver and his crew of men. Another explorer was Captain Wilkes who discovered my home town of Gig Harbor and named it Gig Harbor. Also, he named other nearby places like Mount Rainier.

Here in Gig Harbor we do have our own history museum like many of the other cities and towns do in the area. Often they have different exhibits during the year. I haven’t been in the museum for a couple years now so I am due to go into again real soon. When I was last in there they had an exhibit from the early 1900s and the local families who lived there at the time. Many of the grandchildren and great grandchildren still live in Gig Harbor so I was very familiar with the names. They had one exhibit where you could get into a row boat and travel from the head of the harbor out to the sand spit. They showed pictures of the old homes and businesses that were there at the time. A group of sisters were shown lying on the sand spit at that time. The spit is right by where you enter into the harbor. It is not very wide and is shallow. Captain Wilkes called it Gig Harbor because he could not enter into the harbor with his ship because of the shallow entrance so he had his ship anchor outside the harbor and he entered using the gigs he had on board to see what was in the harbor.

The museum is right across the street from Donkey Creek Park. When I was a child there was a hardware store where Donkey Creek Park is now located so I didn’t even know that there was a creek. Also it is possible I wasn’t very observant either. Going east along the same road that Donkey Creek Park is another creek and park called Crescent Creek. That one I did know about because it has been a park as long as I have been alive. I spent a lot of time at the park. It was the home field for my little league baseball team and I made a wonderful catch in one of the last games I played in little league. During my junior high days me and my friends many on the little league team we played a lot of football at the park on the lower end near the creek. Once when I was about eight years old my mother was very upset with me because one day I lost a pair of glasses that she had just gotten me in the creek. Both of the creeks salmon go up to spawn. Donkey Creek you will see several seagulls ready for the salmon to return from spawning to get them. You can see ducks going up a little ways into the creek too. The entrance to Crescent Creek is wider and is quite muddy so you don’t see to many birds or ducks. The mud is the reason to why I could not retrieve my glasses.

Anyway this is some of my story concerning the history of Gig Harbor and Washington State. I will write more later about the history. I know everywhere has fascinating stories about their history.