Outdoor classroom and education center join network of trails in beloved Bellingham forest
Bellingham officials accepted the donation of a native plant garden and outdoor education center in the city’s beloved Hundred Acre Wood, where trails and markers are being developed after a “master plan” for the park was approved last year.
In a short ceremony with a handful of people attending Thursday evening, Bellingham Mayor Seth Fleetwood drew a throughline to the early days of environmental activism and the city’s network of urban trails and parks.
“This entire property was central to the Greenways program,” Fleetwood said.
“It was the energy in these woods that led to the second Greenways” tax levy that helped neighbors buy the site and save it from a proposed housing development a decade ago, he said.
More than $100 million has been spent on citywide Greenways projects since voters passed the first levy in 1990, Fleetwood said.
The nonprofit Recreation Northwest is building the outdoor education center with donations, grants and paid and volunteer labor, and then turning it over to the city, the group’s executive director said.
“We saw the opportunity and the need, and the community resoundingly wants space to gather,” Todd Elsworth said.
Placards are placed around the native plant garden, which Elsworth calls a “passive learning space” that features salmonberry, western red cedar, sword fern, snowberry and other Northwest flora.
In addition to the garden, the outdoor education center will feature a covered pavilion and amphitheater for school groups and others to use, he said.
“Having a covered pavilion provides shelter from inclement weather and even from the sun,” Elsworth said.
“We’ll be looking to the community to help finish (the classroom),” Elsworth said.
Its location is about 100 yards up a trail that starts at the Fairhaven Park picnic pavilion, and it should be finished by the end of the year, he said.
Trails leading to the center will be accessible to wheelchair users and others who have difficulty walking, said Nicole Oliver, Parks and Recreation Department director.
Hundred Acre Wood, then called the Chuckanut Community Forest, was an 82-acre tract had been slated for a subdivision, but the city instead bought the land for $8.2 million and voters in 2013 created a special taxing district to repay the city.
Its north end links to trails that head downtown and beyond, and its south end provides a connection to Arroyo Park and the extensive trail system through the Chuckanut Mountains.
Hundred Acre Wood has been a south-side neighborhood hiking and biking spot for decades, with well-worn homemade trails.
Recent purchases have increased its size to just over 100 acres.
Oliver said she remembered visiting the area for the first time decades ago, before it was an official park.
“To see it all these years later, coming together, is really great. It’s a really special place,” Oliver said.
This story was originally published May 5, 2023 at 1:39 PM.
