Gig Harbor

The Maritime City

Gig Harbor is one of those places where the geography explains almost everything.

Tucked into a narrow, protected inlet across Puget Sound from Tacoma, the harbor is nearly enclosed by land. Boats sit quietly against docks, wooded hills rise behind the shoreline, and on a clear day Mount Rainier appears beyond the water. It feels remarkably sheltered from the larger cities nearby.

Long before European settlement, the area was home to Coast Salish peoples, particularly the Puyallup Tribe, who traveled and harvested throughout the waterways of southern Puget Sound.

The name Gig Harbor came much later. In 1841, an American naval expedition exploring Puget Sound sent a small boat known as a captain's gig into the protected bay. The expedition's map labeled the place Gig Harbor, and the name remained.

But the community that developed around the harbor was shaped largely by the water—and by the people who made their living from it.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, immigrants from Croatia's Dalmatian Coast settled here and found a landscape that must have felt at least somewhat familiar: a protected harbor, forested hills and a life oriented toward the sea. Many became commercial fishermen and boatbuilders. 

Families with names that are still familiar around Gig Harbor built a fishing community whose boats traveled well beyond Puget Sound, eventually following salmon north to Alaska.

The boats themselves became part of Gig Harbor's identity. Local fishermen favored sturdy wooden vessels known as purse seiners, designed for the salmon fishery. Boatbuilding yards appeared around the harbor, and generations of fishermen, shipwrights and families created a working waterfront rather than simply a picturesque one.

That distinction still matters.

Unlike waterfront communities where nearly every trace of the original industry has disappeared, Gig Harbor retains pieces of its maritime past. Fishing boats share the water with recreational vessels. Historic net sheds remain along the shoreline. Small docks reach into the harbor, and the town continues to celebrate the fishing traditions that helped create it.

Gig Harbor also has an unusual layout for visitors because there isn't really one single downtown. The historic waterfront district follows Harborview Drive around the western side of the bay, while the Uptown area sits farther inland. For an Urban Wine Walk, it's the older waterfront that tells the more interesting story.

Our walk follows Harborview Drive past docks, parks and old waterfront buildings, occasionally leaving the street to wander closer to the water. Stop for coffee. Watch boats move through the harbor. Find a glass or flight of wine and then continue along the shoreline. The walk isn't about covering much distance; it's about repeatedly finding another reason to stop.

And almost everywhere you go, the harbor remains in view.

That's what makes Gig Harbor such a natural fit for Urban Wine Walkers. The coffee, wine and restaurants add to the experience, but they aren't really the main attraction. The pleasure comes from moving between them on foot, with the water beside you and nowhere in particular that you need to get to quickly.

More than a century after Croatian fishing families began building boats and livelihoods along these shores, Gig Harbor still feels like a town facing inward toward its harbor.

For visitors, that's an invitation to do the same.