Feature Archives | Page 3 of 6 | Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation

‘An emotional departure’ at the Exclusion Memorial

‘An emotional departure’ at the Exclusion Memorial

Where the Departure Deck ends, wartime exile began.

New interpretive artwork at the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial at Pritchard Park recalls the day in March 30, 1942, when 227 Bainbridge Islanders of Japanese descent, most American citizens, departed from this site for wartime exile. Their destination: concentration camps in Manzanar, Calif.

The works, by artists Anna Brones and Luc Revel, were inspired by photographic images taken on the exclusion day. An imposing mid-span gate is by Port Townsend craftsman John Buday of Port Townsend.

Oxidized steel figures depict the men, women and children carrying their scant belongings down the deck to a waiting ferry. Towering soldiers with bayonets in reverse-silhouette loom over the approach, while a pivoting steel plank underfoot evokes the clang of bars, of incarceration. Near the end of the deck, a lone “ghost figure” defined by negative space suggests absence […]

‘An emotional departure’ at the Exclusion MemorialDouglas2024-02-21T15:14:30-08:00

Restoring a forest at Strawberry Hill

Restoring a forest at Strawberry Hill

Trees this tall shouldn’t be this thin.

Bundled like pencils they stand, ring upon ring of bare, withered branches scaling their skinny trunks toward tiny puffs of green canopy aloft. In a Pacific Northwest defined by majestic forests of Douglas fir, the trees on the new Strawberry Hill Park addition have never quite made the grade. Now the challenge is helping the best ones move forward.

“It should not be this heavily stocked for this size of tree,” says Lydia Roush, natural resources manager for Bainbridge Metro Parks, scanning the rolling stands of troubled firs along park’s west edge. “It’s kind of a miracle more trees haven’t come down, or they’re not in even worse shape.”

The 10-acre parcel reflects the shifting uses of the island landscape, its natural and cultural history. Ancient forests were cleared for timber and, here, agriculture. Several generations of berry […]

Restoring a forest at Strawberry HillDouglas2022-11-23T11:57:39-08:00

Community Grants fund community chess board at Battle Point

Community Grants fund community chess board at Battle Point

For the record, Ben Watson doesn’t actually play chess.

But you may – or checkers, for that matter – and Watson’s Eagle Scout project sets you up for a pleasant match at Battle Point Park.

The Bainbridge High School junior installed an outdoor chess board and benches at the park this summer to complete his Scout requirements for Bainbridge Island Troop 1564. The project was supported by a $2,700 Community Grant from the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation.

“I was thinking I really wanted something that would last,” Watson said. “I wanted something really permanent that I could come back to, way down the line.”

“Permanent” pointed to concrete, in both senses of the word, and Watson wanted something more interactive than a typical park bench. While not a chess player himself, he landed on an outdoor chess table typical of many urban […]

Community Grants fund community chess board at Battle PointDouglas2022-08-20T10:11:47-07:00

Park Stewards program looks for next-level volunteers

Park Stewards program looks for next-level volunteers

Everybody has a favorite park – that one with great features, a special memory attached, or just the one down the street.

For Pete Jones, it’s the park right next door.

A resident of the historic Victorian Lane condominiums – built around 1910, as officers quarters for a then-remote Coast Artillery Corps post at “Bean Point” – Jones has only to step outside, cross a green threshold and lose himself in the 137 acres of Fort Ward Park.

“One of the reasons we moved in was because of the park,” says Jones, who relocated to the island from California’s Carmel Valley three years ago. “I’ve been hiking in this park since day one, almost every single day.”

No surprise that Fort Ward Park is Jones’ “absolute” pick as a founding volunteer with Park Stewards, a new program of the Bainbridge Island Metro Park & […]

Park Stewards program looks for next-level volunteersDouglas2022-06-21T16:05:47-07:00

A ‘trifecta of awesomeness’ on the STO Trail

A ‘trifecta of awesomeness’ on the STO Trail

In the fullness of a 3,700-mile route, a seven-mile ribbon across a little island in Puget Sound may not seem so grand.

Then again, it’s our seven miles. So the fact that Bainbridge Island’s bit of the Sound to Olympics Trail also falls along the path of the Great American Rail-Trail – a contiguous path that will stretch from the other Washington to this one, crossing a dozen states and entirely walkable and bikeable – that’s turning into kind of a big deal.

That’s what Kevin Belanger, project manager for Washington D.C.-based Rails To Trails Conservancy found during an April visit to Bainbridge Island. Belanger came to spend an hour walking the STO’s Winslow segment with local trails fans, and was greeted by City Hall.

“I really […]

A ‘trifecta of awesomeness’ on the STO TrailDouglas2022-09-23T11:08:42-07:00

EarthCorps chips in at Exclusion Memorial, Pritchard Park

EarthCorps chips in at Exclusion Memorial, Pritchard Park

When EarthCorps geared up on Bainbridge Island last spring, Daisy Torres built trails on Blakely Hill and rooted out blackberries at Blakely Harbor.

When she returned this week with an all-new crew, Torres looked forward to more of the same – especially the trail building, which she quite enjoyed. The heavy equipment was fun.

The new assignment, though, came as a surprise, and a welcome one: restoration work at the Exclusion Memorial at Pritchard Park, on the eve of the 80-year observance of the forced wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans.

“I’d been wanting to come to this place, and I didn’t think we’d actually be working here,” Torres said. “It feels really meaningful and purposeful to be doing this right before the 80th anniversary, and being a small part of that for people.”

The Parks Foundation is partnering with the Bainbridge Island Japanese American […]

EarthCorps chips in at Exclusion Memorial, Pritchard ParkDouglas2022-02-17T20:19:09-08:00

Volunteers boost restoration at Blakely Harbor Park

Volunteers boost restoration at Blakely Harbor Park

Not unlike the rest of us, Blakely Harbor Park came out of lockdown ready to reconnect with friends.

Bainbridge park usage soared during COVID’s first year – how long ago that now seems, but who didn’t want to get outside? But the pandemic also curbed stewardship programs that overlay the Park District’s regular maintenance work to help keep parks healthy and smart.

As the clouds of pandemic cleared a bit this past year, volunteers safely returned to the field and island parks came out the better – perhaps none more than Blakely Harbor.

There, a concentrated, months-long effort by Bainbridge Metro Parks, supported by the Bainbridge Island Parks Foundation and the City of Bainbridge Island, paid off with a newly restored meadow and shoreline.

It began in spring with blackberry and ivy pulls, tough work that continued through the summer months. By fall, with noxious vines […]

Volunteers boost restoration at Blakely Harbor ParkDouglas2021-12-22T11:09:07-08:00

Rediscovering the Lost Valley for public trails

Rediscovering the Lost Valley for public trails

THE MIST TURNED INTO A DRIZZLE, THEN A STEADY RAIN, THEN A DOWNPOUR.

Not the most auspicious afternoon for even a Northwest hike in autumn. So the party tramped about 50 yards down the sodden trail, paused for a quick photo, and retreated to the shelter of a nearby barn to chat and recall the day, nearly two decades ago, they first bushwhacked across this same land.

“That was coming from the creek, up this way,” recalled Andy Maron, who served on the City Open Space Commission when “Lost Valley” first slipped into the local lexicon.

“I remember jumping over that stream,” Maron said, indicating nearby Cooper Creek. “You didn’t have to wade it, but jump over it.”

There was no trail in those days, and Maron, fellow Open Space Commissioner Connie Waddington and an ad hoc group of explorers crunched their way through […]

Rediscovering the Lost Valley for public trailsDouglas2025-04-18T11:40:37-07:00

Building a greener urban trail on the STO

Building a greener urban trail on the STO

Let history record that the Sakai Pond Connector’s first user came not on wheel or foot, but hoof.

As crews feathered in the last of 400 feet of asphalt on the Sound To Olympics Trail’s newest leg, a black-tailed doe emerged from the woods, sampled a newly planted tree at the trailside – not to its taste, fortunately – scampered across the new trail and off into the highway lanes.

“Be smart,” one onlooker enjoined in the deer’s direction.

“Or lucky,” said another.

Highway traffic paused briefly, the doe disappeared across the far shoulder, and work went on. By the end of the day, STO Sakai was done.

Let the wheels and feet follow.

That the deer found the trailside so tantalizing owes to the aggressive planting schedule (formerly “restoration,” now “assisted natural revegetation” in the parlance) of Northwest trees and shrubs.

[…]

Building a greener urban trail on the STODouglas2022-02-10T22:51:33-08:00

‘It is spectacular’ – KidsUp! The Next Generation of Play is here, Sept. 4

‘It is spectacular’ – KidsUp! The Next Generation of Play is here, Sept. 4

Chris Cain would tell you, he had the easy part.

Designing KidsUp! The Next Generation of Play, the spectacular, super-inclusive new playground at Battle Point Park, didn’t take much more than brainstorming with parents and suggesting what might go where. Then he stood back and watched.

“My role was really just to put ideas on paper, and get it spatially organized,” says Cain, a landscape architect with Bainbridge Island’s Studio Hanson Roberts. “Normally when we do a design project, it takes months of planning, there’s packages of drawings to deliver… I sat in on meetings and did some sketches here and there.”

Well, there was a little more to it than that. But when the new playground opens on Sept. 4, kids of all ages and abilities will find a veritable wonderland of sight, sound, sensation and even scent in the wildflower and herb gardens, play features […]

‘It is spectacular’ – KidsUp! The Next Generation of Play is here, Sept. 4Douglas2021-09-01T12:42:14-07:00