| Point Defiance might be the finest park on Puget Sound -- and one of the finest urban parks in all of America -- and not just because there are so many fun things to do across its almost 700 green acres.
The trees are so fantastic, you can feel like you're all alone. You can be alone and commune with nature within city limits.
Here you can still rent a boat and catch a king salmon. You can picnic on a bluff overlooking the swirling waters of the sound, where the currents of The Narrows rush insistently into Dalco Passage when the tide ebbs. You can pedal or jog a scenic five-mile lane through the forest that offers many majestic marine vistas.
Some of the last of the magnificent native old-growth fir, hemlock and cedar forests left on the Sound, along with one of its largest remaining stands of madrona, line three miles of perhaps the wildest shore in any American city.
The park, originally a U.S. Army reserve that was never used and was given to Tacoma in 1888, sits on a two-mile, proboscis-shape peninsula that pokes out into Puget Sound and separates The Narrows from Dalco Passage. The singular thing about it is it remains mostly forested despite being in the heart of the biggest urban corridor in the Pacific Northwest, the almost continuous stretch of development between Everett and Olympia.
The shore of Point Defiance Park still looks much as it did when Capt. George Vancouver sailed the Sound in 1792: log-littered and crowned by large, snaggy old-growth firs trees, some more than 200 feet tall and in spring often accented moodily by clouds, mists and sea breezes.
In 1841, Charles Wilkes, commander of the American expedition that charted Puget Sound, named the point after proclaiming that with 10 cannons mounted there, he could defy any invader. |
