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Gig Harbor Now and Then | The history of this beach of dreams

Posted on January 10th, 2025 By: Greg Spadoni

Genius at work

After Tonya found the beach for sale, she texted me a county parcel map that outlined the triangular piece of property. I responded with, “I think that’s a part of Lot 4, Block 18 of the Purdy plat from 18-something.”

Four minutes later I sent this: “Look on the county’s website again, click on that parcel, then choose one of the options (I don’t remember which one, the 1^st or the 2^nd, I think), and find the legal description. If it still mentions Lot 4, Block 18, that’s it. If it doesn’t mention the Lot and Block, it could still be that. Sometimes the old references are replaced by references to later short plats.”

After quickly looking up the legal description, she responded with, “Section 24 Township 22 Range 01 Quarter 22; Lots 3 and 4 in Block 18.”

I could’ve left it at that, and looked like a genius.

I should’ve left it at that and looked like a genius.

But I knew that someday, somehow, and probably a lot sooner rather than later, Tonya would find out that I had already researched the original Purdy plat and compared it to today’s configuration for “The First Lumber Mill of Purdy, Washington,” a story I did in 2022. After all, she figured out the virtually impossible Gig Harbor Now and Then Item of Mystery in a matter of hours. This one wouldn’t escape her notice for long.

So I ‘fessed up right away.

No genius involved; just dumb luck that she asked about a piece of property I was already familiar with.

The plat of Purdy, now and in its original configuration. Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer aerial parcel map.

To the site

We went for an on-site inspection of the place a day or two later, and I was impressed. It’s a little slice of paradise, tucked away so completely that you can barely see the daily traffic jams just a couple hundred feet away. And the constant, mind-numbing drone of three unending streams of traffic meeting at the stoplight is an ever-present reminder that while the rat race never ends, you, at least, can get away from it all on your own private beach. …OK, so maybe you can’t, but you can pretend.

All those poor saps on the highway can try to pass their time stuck in the backups with hopeless thoughts of a leisurely vacation in the tropics, while you’re pretending you’re already living yours.

Who could ever have guessed that the beach with the most beautiful views on Puget Sound is hidden from the outside world in Purdy? Photo by Greg Spadoni.

The secret Burley Lagoon hideaway looks so much like a picture-book Polynesian island that the only thing missing is a palm tree. Every square foot of the beach is covered with slimy, uneven rocks and sharp barnacles so inviting that you just want to wiggle your toes into them and luxuriate in the unwelcoming cold that takes the sting out of your newly shredded skin.

It has a view to rival any tourist beach in Tahiti, including all the electrical service entrance boxes on the backside of the retail building that borders it on the south.

The southern exposure of the Beach of Dreams provides an unparalleled view of the neighbor’s electrical service entrance equipment. Photo by Greg Spadoni.

It’s obviously a popular destination, as evidenced by the many scattered beer cans and the concentration of not-completely-used-up cigarette butts. An enterprising new beach owner could take them apart for the tobacco and roll new ones. Then just lean back in your folding aluminum lawn chair that’s slowly sinking into the mud, and puff away in glorious celebration of your new tropical getaway!

The Beach of Dreams is already a proven location for living the good life. Photo by Tonya Strickland.

As tempting as it might be, it would not be a good idea to also smoke the dead salmon rotting on the beach. They’re there to let you know you’re on a saltwater bay, even when darkness or thick fog hampers the view. And as anyone can tell you, saltwater beaches are better than freshwater beaches any day. There’s more action — the tide comes in and goes out twice a day — and there’s more sea life. More sea death too, as the carcasses visually — and odoriferously — demonstrate.

The Beach of Dreams comes with an intoxicating ambiance that only a saltwater location can provide. Photos by Greg Spadoni.

Aside from the many high points the property has to offer, it also has an unusually interesting history.

An unlikely story

The Purdy town site was platted in 1885 by James Ashton. It included quite a few lots that were underwater at high tide. Lots 3 and 4, Block 18, were among them.

Ashton sold the southernmost lots of the plat to James Wickersham, a lawyer and very active real estate speculator of the day, and co-founder of the town of Springfield, on the opposite side of Burley Lagoon. Wickersham sold 36 of the lots to Tabor Sherman in late 1889, including what would later become today’s Beach of Dreams.

Sherman put up a lumber mill on some of the lots that weren’t underwater when the tide came in. After struggling to make a go of the business, he went bankrupt, ultimately losing the mill and 35 of the 36 lots at a sheriff’s sale in 1893.

Tabor Sherman’s lumber mill occupied the southernmost 36 lots of the Purdy plat, including today’s Beach of Dreams. Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer aerial base map.

The new owners made good money with the mill until 1897, when they finished filling all the orders that had kept them busy for four years.

After the mill shut down for good, the owners considered moving it to Tacoma, but chose to dispose of it instead. Phipps Romanus Keith was the salesman hired to sell the machinery of the Purdy lumber mill. He was self-employed, selling saws in Tacoma, when given the job to liquidate the mill equipment.

Who bought it?!

While Keith was shopping around the machinery of the Purdy sawmill in the late spring of 1897, the 35 lots of the Purdy town plat that made up the mill site, including the future Beach of Dreams, were sold. The buyer was a 3-year-old girl from Kitsap County.

That’s not a misprint or a mistake on my part. It was sold to a 3-year old girl. She is listed as the sole owner on the deed.

Phipps Keith himself bought and sold several other lots in the Purdy plat in the first few years after the mill shut down, while the 3-year-old girl who had purchased the mill site held onto most of it until early adulthood. She sold several lots to one of her sisters along the way, so it all remained in the family.

Eventually her ownership, and her sister’s, came under threat. The now-26-year-old Isabel and her older sister Jessie had refused to turn over 29 of the 35 lots to their father, Phipps Keith, upon his demand. Obviously, he was the one who had put the mill property in Isabel’s name in 1897. By 1919 he wanted it in his name, and they said no, so he sued them. And won. His two daughters were given five days to sign over ownership to their father, but they did not. The court then directed the county clerk to draw up a deed granting ownership to Phipps Keith. After 22 years, the majority of the mill site finally belonged to him, including Puget Sound’s most exotic waterfront location.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that the Keith family was seriously conflicted, what with the father suing the daughters and all. Yet seven years later he gave three of the lots back to Isabel for free, but not any in Block 18.

Subsequent history saw the installation of piling on the Beach of Dreams, now reduced to rotting stubs. There’s no indication of what purpose they served. That means the next owners can make up their own story. And it better be a good one, for no other reason than to deflect attention away from the real story of why they bought this little slice of pointlessness in the first place. That won’t be easy to explain.

— Greg Spadoni, Friday, Jan. 10, 2025