Finholm View Climb, Gig Harbor

With almost all my blog posts going to my column over at Gig Harbor Now, I haven’t posted on this blog in awhile! But fear not. Here’s your next family-friendy Gig Harbor outing on the next non-rainy day.This (last?) summer, the kids and I walked up North Harborview Drive and found the love locks over Donkey Creek.

About a week, we trekked a little later further north where we checked off two more of the city’s park sites from its city rec page: Bogue Viewing Platform and its nearby scenic friend, the Finholm View Climb.

Located in/next to the Anthony’s restaurant parking lot  at 8826 North Harborview Drive, this city rec spot has 100 stairs leading up the hillside into a residential neighborhood. Its in multi-platform design features landings, view stops and local history. The landing is named after the late Ed and Johnny Finholm, brothers proprietors of the longtime downtown Finholm’s market next door. Here’s a wonderful biography for the brothers and the story of their popular market on the Harbor History Museum’s old blog. Each step on the wooden planks sports a small rectangular plaque marker for donors who contributed to the project, or folks who purchased markers in memory of someone’s name. The project appears was dedicated to the city by the Gig Harbor Lions Club with a ceremony in July 1999 (and a refurb in 2017).

Oscar and Anna Gustafson are Burton Gustafson’s grandparents.

My favorite part of here was spotting local family names from our WWII Monument story on the little donor plaques (hello, Burton Gustafson’s grandparents!). In fact, all the local names were fun to browse as the kids and I huffed and puffed up, up, up from the Harborview shops and eateries toward the top of the stairs marked at 8917 Franklin Ave.

In what the city says is (surprisingly) a half-mile-long excursion, Finholm View Climb provides a walkable option from the Peacock Hill area homes into the downtown waterfront.

In August (right after we walked it! Eeek), the city closed the entire staircase to repair some wood-rot and re-opened it in November. 

This site’s bullet-point features include:

• restrooms at the Harborview Drive entrance 
• 100 stairs
• views of Mount Rainier (on a clear day)
• drinking fountain
• seating
• view landings/platforms

…. I also read on an old city council agenda that there’s a time capsule there?!? More on that soon.

See ya out there!