Gig Harbor Peninsula Historical Society & Museum, Washington~the Unique History of the Peninsula-On-Line Exhibits

Pearl (Pederson) Heaton
Evelyn (Pederson) Jackson
Owners: Pearl's by the Sea, 1951-1972

The little restaurant near the Purdy Bridge called Pearl's by the Sea was famous from California to the Canadian border and perhaps even farther. Daughters of Purdy pioneers, Pearl and her sister Evelyn started the restaurant as a small coffee cafe. But its reputation for lots of good food in a family atmosphere soon grew, forcing the sisters to expand the building twice.

Evelyn was a very gracious cashier and hostess. Pearl was the cook. The restaurant opened at 7 a.m., but Pearl would be baking pies and fresh rolls at 4 or 5 a.m. In summer, her wild blackberry pie was a celebrated item on the menu. In winter, storm waves from Henderson Bay crashed over the bulkhead against the restaurant windows.

Pearl's was where local residents came on special occasions. Tourists dined there on their way to the Olympic Peninsula. Going home from Bremerton, shipyard workers stopped off for coffee and pie. Men working near Purdy slipped in the back door before the restaurant opened to shoot the breeze over coffee and cinnamon rolls. The place was always busy.

Employees, many of them students from Peninsula High School, remember it as an uncommonly friendly place to work. But when Pearl and Evelyn first opened the restaurant, they had agreed to operate it 20 years. So, after 20 very successful years, Pearl's by the Sea was sold.

Margaret Alvestad Goldman (1912 - )

Postmaster, Wauna Post Office, 1945-1974

In 1890, when the post office was opened, the dock and general store at Wauna (then known as Springfield) were the center of community activity. Everyone gathered there when steamboats delivered supplies, passengers, and mail from Tacoma.

By 1945 when Margaret Goldman became postmaster, several things had changed. She and her husband Edward Goldman now owned the store. The store itself had been pivoted around to face the beach road not the dock. The post office was not the little cubby hole it had been but a separate room, about 10 feet by 20 feet, adjoining the store building.

Margaret Goldman poses with a
spool of the telephone cable that
crossed the Narrows, 1930

Sketch of the Wauna post office

One thing hadn't changed. There were still a lot of nice people in the neighborhood who still met at the store to get their mail, now delivered by car, not boat. They stood around the store shooting the breeze and telling fish stories, waiting for Margaret to sort the mail into the lock boxes. They brought her pussy willows in January and daffodils in the spring.

Margaret enjoyed working there. The post office was built on pilings overlooking Henderson Bay. She could see sea birds bobbing about on the waves. When the tide was in, waves splashed against the building. When high tides and strong waves tore boats from their moorings Margaret would see them being blown down the bay, to be broken to bits.

After 29 years, Margaret retired from the Wauna Post Office. During her years of service, the community had grown and so had the post office facilities. In 1990, the post office celebrated its 100th anniversary.

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