TACOMA, Wash. — The large green swath on Tacoma’s eastern boundary has been called Swan Creek Park for decades, but the term “park” might have been a bit misleading.
More accurate was the description used by people like Tacoma mountain biker Sean Canfield: “It was a no-man’s land.” Hike or bike the forested 373 acres and it wasn’t uncommon to stumble across a homeless encampment or drug paraphernalia.
And for a large park less than 2.5 miles from the Tacoma Dome, it seemed few people knew about it. “I didn’t find it until I found this green patch on Google maps,” Canfield said.
But thanks to a 5-year-old master plan developed by Metro Parks Tacoma and a host of volunteers, Swan Creek is finally taking shape, not just as a park but as a place that might someday stand alongside Point Defiance as a vital piece of the South Sound’s recreational identity.
“It’s really turned around, and I think that’s the greatest thing,” said Marina Becker, Metro Parks director of parks and natural resources. “You see a lot of families out there, a lot of people with dogs, school groups down in the creek … .
“It’s really become sort of a destination for our community to be able to access a bunch of a cool outdoor activities pretty close to anywhere in the city. It’s a treasure.”
The mountain bike trail system recently doubled in size. Regular work parties from the Washington Trails Association are helping improve the hiking trails that travel through and above Swan Creek Canyon. Volunteers are planting a food forest, where visitors will be welcome to visit and sample the offerings of food-producing trees and plants.
Bike races and mud runs have been staged in the park the last two years. Swan Creek’s community garden is the largest in the city.
“There is so much going on,” Becker said. “It’s really an incredible resource.”
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Canfield spent dozens of hours volunteering with Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance when the organization helped Metro Parks build Tacoma’s first mountain bike park. The trail system opened in 2014 with nearly 3 miles of trails.
Today Canfield has a temporary position with Metro Parks as an excavator helping finish Phase 2 of the bike park. Evergreen estimates the additional work gives the park nearly six miles of trails.
The trails, underwritten in part by a $20,000 donation from REI, were scheduled to be completed by the end of the year, but they are already open for riding.
Canfield says he’s seeing more users on the trails than ever before.
The new trails fill the obvious deficiency that came with Phase 1. “It was a great start, but it was not really enough,” said Mike Westra of Evergreen.
More than half of Phase 1 was considered easy trails. This was by design, says Brian Tustison, a Tacoma resident working for Evergreen. It made the bike park accessible to more people. Phase 1 was also highlighted by some challenging jump lines best left to the experts. However, there wasn’t much for the intermediates in between these green and black lines.
The gap is now filled, thanks to new trails with names like “Ground Control” and “Major Tom” in honor of David Bowie, and Murphy’s Law that was named for the nasty weather and other obstacles that kept holding up trail work. Old favorites like “Breaking Bad” and “Hustle & Flow” are expanded.
With the new trails, the bike park now offers a smooth transition from beginner to intermediate to expert.
“Start on Hustle & Flow, the main trail around the outside of the park,” Tustison said. “Then once you feel comfortable, there are trails that break off that are a little more difficult for you to explore.
“That’s one of the best parts. Exploring and getting oriented. It is mountain biking so there should be a little bit of adventure.”
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According to Metro Parks’ online history of Swan Creek, the park’s trails were completed in 1985.
While a walk up the lush green canyon while watching salmon spawn in the creek might make visitors feel as if they’d traveled far from the city, the trails weren’t always in good shape.
The Washington Trails Association has helped improve the trails with regular work parties. Volunteer groups typically ranged from 12-30 people.
“The work out there has been pretty important because I don’t think the county and Metro Parks has been able to do much maintenance since they built it,” said Chris Beale, a WTA volunteer and president of ForeverGreen Trails, in a February interview with The News Tribune.
While the trails association is best known for its work in national parks and forests, it has been doing more projects in community parks.
“I think this movement of WTA getting down to Puget Sound parks is really connecting people,” Beale said. “… It’s getting people out there and getting them reinvested in public land stewardship. If we can continue this work, you connect people to trails and you connect them together and expose them to new areas right in their backyard that they might not even know about.”
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