Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park
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Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park is a 3,493-acre (1,414 ha) county park founded in 2014, and is the largest in Kitsap County, Washington.[1] It contains 60 miles (97 km) of trails.[2]
The park property was acquired from Pope Resources/Olympic Resource Management, a forestry company, partly in direct purchases by the county government, and partly by the Forterra land conservation non-profit corporation who raised funds through individual donations and grants.[3][4][5][6]
Olympic Resource Management's Olympic Property Group proposed a public trail system in its Port Gamble property c. 2007. Invoking the Olmsted Brothers park planning, local groups envisioned a regional "String of Pearls" trail plan c. 2011 in the Pacific Northwest linking water trails linking the Olympic National Park on the Olympic Peninsula with the Kitsap Peninsula.[7] A proposed system, the Sound to Olympics Trail, would allow one to cross Washington State by foot on a continuous trail system from the Pacific Ocean to the Idaho border. Kitsap County plans to embody a portion of the Sound to Olympics Trail in the Port Gamble Forest.[8]