Commercial fishing, boat building, and logging dominated the economy of the Gig Harbor area, which developed two business districts in the 1920s on opposite sides of the harbor. Transportation between Gig Harbor and Tacoma was primarily handled by the "Mosquito fleet", a network of mostly-passenger steamships that traversed various points on Puget Sound. Automobiles were required to drive through Olympia to reach Tacoma; the Washington Navigation Company later launched a Point Defiance–Gig Harbor ferry service in 1927 that could carry 80 vehicles. The first Tacoma Narrows Bridge was completed in July 1940 to replace the ferry crossing, but collapsed a few months later. The ferry service was restored until the modern-day westbound bridge was completed in 1950. A third bridge opened in 2007 to carry eastbound traffic on the expanded State Route 16 freeway.
