White settlement in Gig Harbor began on the east side of the harbor, where Samuel Jerisich arrived in 1867 and built a small cabin near the sandpit before his family later moved to the west side. Joseph and Rose Goodman and their children came by steamboat in 1883, were left with their possessions on the sandspit, lived for a year in a cabin near the sandspit, and then moved to Crescent Valley. East-side homesteaders found that much of the area was a military reservation not yet open for settlement, and settlers could not acquire title to the land until the reservation was abandoned in the early 1900s. The bay also served community life: before a church was built, religious services were held on a barge moored in the harbor, with worshippers arriving by rowboat and climbing a rope ladder. One of the first steamboat landings, Young's Landing, stood on the east side, where passengers, mail, and freight were handled at the dock, and A.W. Young, Gig Harbor's first postmaster, ran the post office from his home beside the landing. The site later became the county boat ramp, and in 1938 National Air Mail Week was celebrated nearby, where postal employees A.L. Hopkins, John Insel, and Gladys Hunt placed special stamps on letters carried on Gig Harbor's first airmail flight.