by Alan K. Lee
Point Defiance Park in Tacoma, Washington is a 760 acre urban oasis located on a peninsula jutting into Puget Sound. The park has something for almost everyone – a variety of botanical gardens, old growth temperate rain forest areas, a large salt water beach, an off-leash dog park, 15 miles of hiking and biking trails, an ADA accessible waterfront path, a recreation of Fort Nisqually, a marina, and the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. All together, the park’s attractions draw more than three million visitors every year.
If you’ve never been to Point Defiance, check out the park’s website to see all of what the park offers visitors.
Our first stop on our most recent visit was the Rhododendron Garden. Resembling a natural old growth forest more than a formal garden, the trails through the garden are quiet and peaceful, and in the spring and early summer, when the rhodies are in full bloom, this is probably the most beautiful of the park’s gardens.
Owen Beach is a very popular spot on summer weekends. The beach is wide (at least at low tide) and extends for quite a ways along the shore, so it can probably absorb the crowds. On our last visit it was almost completely deserted, though.
There is a wide, paved, ADA accessible path (the Promenade) connecting the beach with the marina area of the park and the Point Ruston Waterwalk, giving unhindered pedestrian and bicycle access to the park from the Tacoma waterfront. And a construction project completed in 2022 expanded the parking lot, created new entry and exit paths for pedestrians and cyclists separated from the vehicle roadway, a new beach pavilion, new restrooms, a new ADA accessible children’s playground, new ADA accessible plazas and pathways, and a renovated WPA-era picnic shelter.
The outer loop of the Five Mile Drive provides numerous waterfront access points with views across Dalco Passage to Vashon Island and across The Narrows to the Gig Harbor area of the Kitsap Peninsula.
The outer loop is closed to vehicular traffic part of the day to give cyclists, runners, and pedestrians access to the northern half of the park free from conflicts with motor vehicles. On our most recent visit it was closed after 2:00 pm, but on our previous visit it was, I believe, closed in the morning. Check the Point Defiance Park website (linked above) for the current schedule if you plan to visit the park.
Most of the outer loop section of the park is heavily forested. There are miles of trails winding through the forest. It’s beautiful, serene, and it’s not hard to forget that you’re only a few miles from the second largest city in Washington.
The Fort Nisqually reconstruction is a living history museum where volunteers and staff, dressed in period clothing, demonstrate the crafts of the 19th century. This Hudson’s Bay Company trading post was the first non-Native settlement on Puget Sound. The original fort was located in what is now DuPont, Washington. The recreation here was built in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration. It is currently scheduled for updating, beginning with the Clerk’s House, that will start this year (2025).
The Northwest Native Garden’s emphasis is, as the name suggests, on plants native to the Northwest’s temperate rain forest. There’s a small pond, small streams and waterfalls, a meadow, and rock formations. It’s a relatively small area, and the trails can be walked in fifteen minutes or so, but you’ll want to linger.
On both of our recent visits our final, and longest, stop was at the botanical gardens area near the entrance to the park. Here there is a large pond with a waterfall, an herb garden, a large rose garden, a dahlia garden, an iris garden, and a Japanese garden. We could easily have spent even more time here than we did on either visit. And if you visit the zoo and aquarium, you could easily spend most of the day just in this section of the park.
Point Defiance Park is one of the largest, and best, city parks in the Pacific Northwest. The park is similar in many ways to Vancouver, BC’s Stanley Park. Point Defiance is, without question, one of Tacoma’s top attractions.
Originally posted May 19, 2019. Most recently updated February 18, 2025.
All photos © Alan K. Lee