Heart of the Harbor

Heart of the Harbor. . , This corner is rich in local history. When the first white men settled in Gig Harbor, they shared the bay with the Native American people who lived in a village on this corner. In the mid 1880s, the Indians permitted the use of one of their buildings as Gig Harbor's first schoolhouse. Logging in the area was in full swing and sometimes logs would shoot off the nearby skid road and hit the school building., In the late 1880s, the Burnham family from Albert Lea, Minnesota, built a home along the creek. They platted the original township of Gig Harbor on property just beyond the creek along the shoreline. The creek was known as Burnham Creek. A wooden bridge was constructed over the creek about this same time. When donkey engines began to be used in the creek bed to haul timber from the woods, the name changed to Donkey Creek., In 1909, the corner became the site of the community's last and longest running sawmill, the C.O. Austin Mill. The mill eventually covered much of this tidal area and did custom sawing, employing up to 34 men. Many were farmers and fishermen who worked for the mill during the winter. Austin purchased logs from local contractors and from booms towed over from Tacoma. In the 1930s, Austin developed a unique form of rustic log construction featuring stripped logs arranged vertically. Several buildings of this type can be found near this corner. The largest, located on the west side of Harborview Drive, was the manufacturing plant for the log kits constructed by C.O.'s son, Howard Austin, and son-in-law, Erick Erickson., [Photo captions, top to bottom, read] , . Workers at C.O. Austin Mill at Donkey Creek, 1946, . C.O. Austin Mill at Donkey Creek, 1946, . Dr. A.M. and Rachel Burnham homestead along Donkey Creek, 1891