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Overview

The City of Gig Harbor retained, in 2020, seventeen netsheds, the largest concentration remaining on Puget Sound. The Skansie Netshed was located prominently in what became Gig Harbor's Downtown area. In 2002, the City of Gig Harbor purchased the Skansie Family House, proprerty and Netshed, incorporating it into a public park adjacent to the Jerisich Dock.

Building History

A significant number of Croatian fishermen migrated to Gig Harbor by the 1900, developing a tightly-knit community, to which the Skansie Family belonged. Netsheds were essentially warehouses for the storage of cotton, purse seine fishing nets, some located at water's edge, some built over the water on pilings. For their preservation, cotton nets needed to be hung up, tarred to retard decompositi and stored in dry conditions. Nets would later become produced of nylon, a synthetic polymer more resistant to natural decomposition, first produced by the DuPont Company beginning in 1939. Nylon nets began to be used widely by fishermen after World War II.

The Skansie Family continued to live on this property until the last brother, Peter, passed away in 2002. At that time, the Skansies worked wth the City of Gig Harbor to preserve the family home and netshed as a public park and memorial to the fishing way of life of the town's early Croatian-American inhabitants.