Chief Sealth Trail:
Washington
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Description:
Description below from Seattle Department of Transportation Website:
The Chief Sealth Trail is a new multi-purpose trail in Southeast Seattle. It is the city's newest addition to the regional trail system. The Chief Sealth Trail provides new connections to the future Mountains-to-Sound Greenway trail extension on Beacon Hill and Sound Transit light rail stations along Martin Luther King Jr. Way. The new trail is one of five regional trails that cross the city, connecting to schools, businesses, and residents while promoting a healthy and active lifestyle. Future trail extensions (not yet funded) include a connection to downtown Seattle and to the City limits in the south.

The appearance of the trail varies in different neighborhoods along the 3.6 mile right-of-way. In general, the pathway curves between gently sloped and seeded hills and mounds. The asphalt paved trail is 10 feet wide, with a two foot gravel shoulder on each side. The completed trail includes pedestrian and bicycle signage and markings to clarify the multi-use trail purpose. No motorized vehicles (except City maintenance ones) are permitted within the corridor.

Since the trail is within the City Light corridor, there is limited flexibility in landscaping or other beautification options. Seattle City Light must maintain easy access to their power facilities for maintenance, repairs, and emergency access. This, combined with ease of landscape maintenance objectives, prevents planting large or medium sized vegetation. The new portions of the trail were seeded with low-growing grass and groundcover.

The excavated soils that were recycled from the light rail construction site have been used to build the trail and to create landscaping mounds along the trail corridor. To build the trail itself, the contractor used clean soils from excavated street trenches and crushed concrete crushed from excavated city streets. This means that virtually the entire trail is built with recycled materials. The height of the mounds varies at different locations. In addition to the trail meandering around and in between these mounds, much of the corridor itself is located on the hillside of Beacon Hill. This affords the design of the trail to provide a variety of grades for various levels of interest and ability. Chief Sealth Trail winds through the right of way corridor offering good transitions between hills and at-street crossings.
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Parking & Trail Access:
Northern trailhead is at Beacon Ave S. and Dawson St. The southern trailhead is off of 51st Ave S near Renton Ave S and the west side of the Kubota Gardens.
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Reviews: [2 trail ratings]
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This is an oddly designed trail
By boundforcountry in January, 2012
As someone born and raised and now back living in the Webster Street area, I thought the Chief Sealth Trail would be a fun thing to explore, but looking at the Google Map and City of Seattle Map, it's very odd that the trail comes over from Kubota Gardens, then stops at Webster Street and doesn't continue under the power lines to Myrtle Street/Othello, instead if you following 35th Avenue South, it's a dead end and you can't make it down to Myrtle Street, unless you go up Webster to 33rd, which does intersect Myrtle, or following the poorly drawn City of Seattle Map, you actually need to detour onto 39th Street and follow that down to Myrtle Place or South Othello and then the trail actually resumes in Holly Park. Since no one lives under the powerlines, I'm not sure why the City didn't create a path down the hill directly to Myrtle/Othello. I can see why the other writer was totally confused, since there isn't any signage directing you anywhere.
Not a good trail
By jbosarge in October, 2011
This trail was not very good at all. There weren't very many signs. I just wanted to run the mail trail not head off to other trails. There were signs for the other trails but not many for this one. At one point it crossed a 4 lane street but didn't have a sign I ran back and forth on the street looking for the trail till I saw a sign on the other side of the street. At one point the trail had a sign to go straight but it went into a neighborhood and there was nothing on the other side of the neighborhood, this is the point where I got frustrated because I couldn't find the trail again and nobody living there knew what I was talking about when I asked them where it started again. The semi marked trail was only about 2 miles. Seriously not worth the time with the amount of frustration you have to deal with. Another thing to note, a lot of really big hills and people let their dogs run on the trail unleashed and do not clean up after them I had to dodge a lot of piles. And one lady who lived near there told me to be careful because some of the dogs the owners let loose are not friendly.
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