Burley flea market helps keeps community alive

Keeping a small community alive and engaged can be difficult, especially with larger cities nearby.

It’s a challenge faced by leaders in the Burley community, located between Gig Harbor and Port Orchard on the Burley Lagoon, an offshoot of Henderson Bay.

Jane Buchanan, president of the Burley Events Group, is tackling this challenge by organizing the first annual Burley June Bug Flea Market to bring together the community.

“It will be a mix of community members selling their own stuff that they want to recycle. And the rest will be artists and vendors,” Buchanan said. “It’ll be a little bit of everything, vintage and new.”

The event currently has 45 vendors registered to sell a variety of items, ranging from vintage to new, repurposed items to handmade creations.

The event will take place at the heart of Burley — the historical Burley Community Hall, built in 1898. Located next door to the Burley Post Office — home to 700 mailboxes — the Community Hall continues to serve as the gathering place for a range of community events, many hosted by the Burley Community Club.

George King, president of the club, runs the monthly community meeting on the second Thursday of every month.

“It’s a gathering of fine people ... anybody and everybody is welcome,” King said. “All they have to do is have a benevolent interest in the area.”

The original settlers of the Burley community were founded by the Co-Operative Brotherhood, a socialist experimental community that ran both a cigar factory and a logging operation, along with farming strawberries and potatoes.

“It’s a good community and it’s a good social outlet,” King said. “We try to help (members) solve their problems.”

Another group active in the Burley community is the Friends of the Burley Lagoon, an activist group run by president Heather McFarlane.

“The organization is an outcome of changes that have come to the area,” McFarlane said. “We want to live in harmony with everything that goes on in the lagoon.”

The group focuses on environmental issues surrounding the lagoon, especially the shellfish industries active in the area. As with the other Burley groups, recruiting new members can be difficult, McFarlane said, and events such as the June Bug can help spread information and attract new members.

The goal of the June Bug is to both attract visitors to Burley and provide community members a chance to socialize and sell some of their items.

Applications for the June Bug where limited at first to the local community and then expanded to include vendors interested from further away, including a Full Tilt Ice Cream truck from Seattle.

Parking for the event is available at the Purdy Park & Ride, with a free shuttle transporting visitors every 15 minutes.

“We have a big waiting list,” Buchanan said. “I just think it’s a wonderful opportunity to engage community members and engage local artists.”

For more information on the event, visit facebook.com/BurleyJuneBugFleaMarket.

This story was originally published June 23, 2016 at 10:02 AM with the headline "Burley flea market helps keeps community alive."