Bellingham’s Hundred Acre Wood park will see significant upgrades through fall
Extensive trail work starts later this month in the Hundred Acre Wood as part of a new round of construction at the popular Southside park that was saved from a proposed housing development more than a decade ago.
Bellingham City Council members unanimously approved plans for the project on Monday night. Efforts include benches, narrower and reinforced trails, boardwalks through wetlands and a bridge over Hoag’s Creek, according to the “Phase 1B Improvements” page online. Work continues into the early fall.
Parks and Recreation Director Nicole Oliver described the project in a City Council committee discussion Monday afternoon.
“This first section is really to create a ‘main vein’ — is what we’re calling it — trail to connect from upper Fairhaven Park all the way down to the Interurban Trail and it will connect from that point on down to Chuckanut Drive,” Oliver told the Parks and Recreation Committee.
Creating that primary trail will involve narrowing and clearly marking the route by closing a network of social trails that have been used by local residents for decades before the city acquired the site, Oliver told The Herald in a phone call.
“There are places especially in the center where it’s all trail. It’s pretty open and there’s no understory. The project is going to plant those areas and clearly mark the main trail. We need to narrow down those big wide trails,” she said.
Neighborhood volunteers have spent hours recently at work parties helping to close those “social trails” and plans native vegetation such as ferns, Oregon grape, salal and snowberry, Oliver said.
“One of the most important things was to help some of the people who use the park regularly understand what we are trying to do. We wanted them to have more ownership in the restoration process,” she said.
Parts of the Hundred Acre Wood and Interurban Trail trail systems may be closed temporarily during construction, according to the project description.
Cost of the project is about $720,000 and will be paid for with Greenways tax funding.
Other plans call for better drainage and native plants. “Wayfinding” or trail directional signs were installed recently as part of an earlier project, Oliver said.
Hundred Acre Wood became an official city park in 2022, with a detailed plan for its development. An outdoor classroom and native plant garden with informational signs opened in 2024.
For years, the park’s original 80-acre site had been an undeveloped maze of social trails that were used mainly by residents of the city’s south side neighborhoods.
When a housing development was proposed in 2010, the city bought the site for $8.2 million and voters created a special taxing district to cover its cost. With recent land acquisitions, the park now encompasses about 100 acres.
This story was originally published July 15, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
