Named for the indigenous Yakama people of the central region of Washington State, the area around the Yakima River has been inhabited since prehistory. Today it defines the Yakima Greenway, which features pathways, parks and protected natural areas. This has turned it into an attraction for the community that both residents and visitors can engage with and enjoy in multiple ways.
A Community Endeavor
What is now the Yakima Greenway came together as the result of civic-minded residents of the city of Yakima banding together to create a visitor-friendly pathway along the Yakima River. It took decades to fully enable, but a recommendation to create a private land trust to acquire and preserve land for the Greenway helped it to become a reality. The Yakima Greenway Foundation has turned the Greenway into a community endeavor that continues to grow and serve as an essential attraction for the region.
The Yakima Greenway is comprised of more than 20 miles of paved pathway, as well as parks, fishing lakes, picnic areas, playgrounds, and river access landings. These locations are in addition to protected and natural areas that provide audiences with a totally different perspective of the natural surroundings. Numerous markers and plaques provide visitors with info and insight about their surroundings.
The Yakima Greenway features 10 distinct destination locations that are along the pathway. Readily available maps highlight them all, with granite markers every quarter mile, starting at Harlan Landing with mile 0. Harlan Landing, Rotary Lake, McGuire Playground, Sarg Hubbard Park, Sherman Park, Spring Creek and Whiteside Preserve are all featured as stops along the Yakima Greenway, with each having distinct activities that have been cultivated or built as part of the experience for visitors. They range from nature walks to play structures to wildlife viewing to hiking.
This variety of experiences have enabled the Yakima Greenway to become an important part of the community that attracts the interest of audiences from across the region and beyond.
An Ideal Spot for Numerous Activities
The entire Yakima River is used for rafting, kayaking, and fishing. These activities along with many others have been further cultivated and created for visitors as part of the Yakima Greenway.
Exercise stations, picnic tables and pavilions are located all across the Yakima Greenway. Numerous facilities alongside the Yakima Greenway can also be rented, while all different types of organized events take place throughout the year. Specific memorials and pieces of history have also been created and developed across the Greenway to provide audiences with numerous other ways to appreciate the history and culture of the area.
Many of the people who were part of the endeavor to create these spaces are memorialized in numerous ways all along the Yakima Greenway, but these commemorations are just one of the ways the Yakima Greenway was funded and continues to be financed. There are also numerous ways that the community can directly support the Greenway.
Greenway facilities are free and open to the public year-round, dawn to dusk. As an ideal spot for walking, bird watching, fishing, running, biking, and enjoying healthy outdoor activity, the Yakima Greenway has become one of the highlights of the city and region, further connecting it to the community in the present and future.
The Jewel of Yakima
Referred to as the “jewel of Yakima”, the Yakima Greenway is enjoyed and supported by thousands of residents and visitors. Free and open throughout the year, the Yakima Greenway is connected to the community in a way that attracts audiences of all types by serving as a place where they can connect with one another and the natural surroundings of central Washington in a powerful way.
