If you've walked the Grand Forest loop this summer, nothing looks different. Same cedar canopy, same wood bridge over Issei Creek, same rock cairn along the Ron Williamson Trillium Trail. But the ground under your feet changed hands twice in less than two years, and neither transaction involved a shovel, a ribbon, or much fanfare beyond a handful of local news stories most residents scrolled past.
Between December 2024 and May 2025, Bainbridge added 46 acres to its public trail network. That's not one project. It's two, and they arrived by such different routes that treating them as a single "new parks" story misses what actually happened. One parcel was a forest islanders had already been hiking for thirty years, saved at the last minute from a sale nobody wanted. The other is a forest that barely exists yet as a park, and this exact summer is the only chance residents have to help decide what it becomes.
Same Season, Two Very Different Stories
| Grand Forest East addition | 8 Acre Woods | |
|---|---|---|
| How it arrived | Community fundraising campaign against a deadline | Outright gift from a private donor |
| Size | About 38 acres | 8 acres |
| Location | South of Koura Road, east of Mandus Olson Road | Corner of Manitou Beach Drive and Mountain View Road, Skiff Point, near Rolling Bay |
| Trail status | Established, maintained for 30+ years | Informal, roughly a third of a mile, unmarked |
| What's needed now | Nothing. Already protected and open. | Volunteers, this summer, to clear blackberry and ivy |
The two stories share a common set of institutions: the Bainbridge Island Land Trust, the Bainbridge Island Metro Park & Recreation District, and the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation. But the mechanics couldn't be more different, and that difference tells you something real about how this island's open space actually gets protected.
The 38 Acres You'd Already Been Walking
Back in the late 1980s, when the state planned to sell off timberland at the heart of the island, a group called the Committee to Save the DNR Forest joined the Land Trust and the Park District to fund a bond levy that protected the original 240 acres of Grand Forest, West, North, and the southern tract of East. At the same time, a separate parcel nearby, first described as 39 acres and later confirmed at 38, was picked up by the Bainbridge Island School District as a hedge against future enrollment growth, a potential school site that never got built. For more than three decades, the Park District quietly maintained its trails as part of the greater Grand Forest system anyway, even though the district didn't own an inch of it.
That arrangement ended on January 9, 2025, when the school board voted to surplus the property. The Land Trust and Parks & Trails Foundation had roughly two months to raise the money before the window closed. Cullen Brady, the Land Trust's executive director, didn't soften the urgency:
"This is an urgent campaign. The School District's January 9, 2025, action to surplus and sell this property, among their first order of business in the new year, started the clock ticking."
The parcel sits inside a wildlife corridor that runs east to west across the island and connects to a conserved network Brady described as nearly 580 contiguous acres at the island's core, home to pileated woodpeckers, great horned owls, and flying squirrels. The Park District and school district had already shaken hands on a $2.2 million agreement on April 17, 2025, and on May 2 the campaign announced it had raised the money to complete it. Dan Hamlin, the Park District's executive director, called the fundraising partnership essential: "We can't make this purchase without the community's help." For the school district, the sale wasn't a loss so much as a release valve. According to reporting in the Bainbridge Island Review, the funds let the district begin seismic retrofits on aging school buildings instead of drawing down its own strained fund balance, a trade Superintendent Amii Thompson called a win-win for the district and the community.
What this means if you already hike here: nothing changes about the trail itself. What changes is that the land under it can never be sold for development again. Mary Meier of the Parks & Trails Foundation put it simply: "This land, once conserved, will continue to provide access for hikers, runners, cyclists, horseback riders, and birdwatchers to use the established trail network." The forest you've been walking for years is now legally guaranteed to stay a forest.
The 8 Acres That Don't Really Exist as a Park Yet
The second addition arrived a few months earlier and looks nothing like the first. In December 2024, a conservation-minded property owner near Rolling Bay donated eight wooded acres at the corner of Manitou Beach Drive and Mountain View Road, at Skiff Point, to the Park District through the Parks & Trails Foundation. The land shares a property line with Fieldstone of Bainbridge, a senior living and memory care community. The dedication happened on December 12, 2024, and the site was named, plainly, 8 Acre Woods.
Unlike Grand Forest East, this parcel had no thirty-year head start. There's no kiosk. No benches. The Park District has described the existing paths as informal, and AllTrails lists just one loop there, roughly a third of a mile through firs and broadleaf trees tangled with ivy and blackberry. The donor had been a longtime Foundation supporter who knew the organization was trying to bring park access to parts of the island that trails and parks had largely skipped over, and Rolling Bay was one of those gaps.
This summer, that gap is finally getting attention, and it's the kind of attention that asks something of residents rather than just offering them a finished amenity. The Park District is running its first-ever volunteer work parties at 8 Acre Woods, partnering with the Rolling Bay Community to pull invasive plants and start shaping the native understory the park will eventually have. As Meier described it, the appeal is modest and real: "a lovely property, offering nearby access for a quiet walk in the woods and connection with nature."
Why the Difference Actually Changes How You Show Up
Here's the part that matters if you're deciding where to spend a Saturday morning this month. Grand Forest East asks nothing new of you. Show up the way you always have, boots on, dog leashed, and walk a forest that's now permanently off the market. It's a place to enjoy, not a project.
8 Acre Woods is the opposite kind of new. There's not much of a trail experience to speak of yet, and if you go expecting a polished loop with signage, you'll be disappointed. What you can do instead, this summer only in this early, unfinished form, is help build it. The Park District's guidance for volunteers is specific: wear durable, long-sleeved clothing because you'll be working around blackberry, bring a reusable water bottle, wear closed-toe shoes, and expect uneven, off-trail terrain. Work parties are open to ages 8 and up. Parking on site is limited, so carpooling, biking, or walking in is encouraged, with overflow parking available at Fieldstone Senior Living, 10861 NE Manitou Park Blvd.
Dates and sign-ups run through the Park District's volunteer calendar, and this is genuinely a narrow window. Once the invasive removal is done and the Foundation adds the benches and kiosk it has planned, 8 Acre Woods becomes a normal neighborhood park, pleasant but finished. Right now it's still being decided, and the people deciding it are whoever shows up with gloves.
Two Ways an Island Protects Its Own Ground
Put side by side, these two stories say something about how Bainbridge actually holds onto its open space. It isn't one steady mechanism. Sometimes it's an emergency, a deadline, and a community writing checks fast enough to beat a sale. Sometimes it's one owner's decision to give land away instead of listing it. The Land Trust alone has helped protect nearly 1,400 acres across the island this way, more than 1,000 of them now public parks and natural areas, through exactly this mix of urgent campaigns and quiet gifts.
Neither path shows up on a map until it's finished. But if you walk Grand Forest East this month, you're walking ground the island fought to keep. If you show up at 8 Acre Woods with a pair of gloves, you're helping decide what it becomes.
That kind of quiet, ground-level stewardship is part of what makes this island worth paying attention to, whether you're clearing blackberry on a Saturday or just walking the dog before work. Mark Middleton Real Estate has spent years watching Bainbridge take care of itself this way, one campaign and one gift at a time, and if you're curious what else is changing on the island, or thinking about your own place in it, we're always glad to talk. Request a private consultation whenever the time feels right.
