My family and I moved to the Pacific NW in November 2022. I thought a fun vacation for summer 2023 would be to drive the Pacific coast and visit as many interesting points as we could find along the way, particularly lighthouses.
Well, we didn’t do any other that.
But for my birthday (in December), my wife said to me, “What do you want to do?” I said, “Let’s go see that troll under the bridge and maybe we can visit a lighthouse while we’re out.” So we decided to do that.
The Troll Under the Bridge is called the “Fremont Troll” because it is in a Seattle neighborhood called Fremont. But this post is not about the Fremont Troll. I only bring it up because it provides some context as to why we were up in that area of Seattle and how we ended up at the West Point Lighthouse.
The West Point Lighthouse is the lighthouse nearest to the Fremont Troll.
As you can see in the map above, the West Point Lighthouse is in Discovery Park, which is a 534-acre natural area park operated by Seattle Parks and Recreation.
The Map to the Lighthouse
Since I have a terrible habit of getting lost or stuck in precarious situations way too often, we started our excursion to the West Point Lighthouse by stopping at the Vistors Center, where we picked up this map:
I’m happy we stopped by the Visitor Center because they told us that the North Beach Trail was out of commission at the time. We therefore used the South Beach Trail.
The path we followed down to the Lighthouse is in red and the pathway in blue is a little detour we took on the way back.
Hiking the South Beach Trail
We followed the path I marked in red on the way down to the lighthouse. You follow the Loop Trail until it connects with the South Beach Trail. There are signs along the trail that make it pretty straightforward.
Our hike started on a paved pathway lined with trees. The signage was easy to follow. The trail did open up into some field areas with great views of the Sound. There were some parts on the way down to the beach that got quite muddy, but nothing unmanageable. The lighthouse was nice and quiant with a good strip of rocky beach where my kids spent some time skipping stones.
Overall, it was a very enjoyable outing.
On the way back, we took the pathway I marked in blue. This takes you to a historic district that has an old church and old military barracks which have been restored to modern homes. Apparently, people now live there. Consequently, the homes are marked with a bunch of signs asking park guests not to enter the private residence area. We were hoping that you could tour the historic structures and were a little disappointed you couldn’t.
I did not take pictures of any of this because by this time, I was tired and wanted to get back to the van.
On that note, after this hike we drove by the Fremont Troll to see it but everyone was too wiped out to want to get out of the car to have a closer look. I also did not take a picture of the troll.
