A Short History of How Discovery Park Came to Be
Discovery Park is more than Seattle’s largest public park; it’s the result of decades of vision, advocacy, restoration, and community effort.
From its origins as a place shaped by Indigenous communities, to its time as Fort Lawton, to its transformation into a protected urban wilderness, the park’s story reflects Seattle’s evolving relationship with open space and the natural world.
This “elevator speech” by Tom Palm, longtime Discovery Park steward and restoration advocate, offers a concise history of how this remarkable landscape came to be and why protecting its future remains so important.
For a deeper look at the park’s history, explore our Discovery Park History resources and learn more about the Discovery Park Master Plan, which continues to guide stewardship of this unique urban landscape.
Tom’s Discovery Park Elevator Speech
I had an opportunity recently to explain to someone the history of Discovery Park. Having been on the Discovery Park Advisory Council for over 15 years and involved in habitat restoration there for twenty years, I thought about all the things I have seen over the years but realized that this person and anyone else who does not have time for a long, disjointed speech from me, might appreciate a short history of how the place we now call Discovery Park came to be and what it means to the future of our region.
The result was my “elevator speech” about Discovery Park. You can find much more detailed narratives online, including on the Friends of Discovery Park web site, but this is my take on it for a busy person who might want to help Discovery Park because they run there every day or want to preserve the peaceful open character of it, but who may have very little awareness of its history and the reason it has been defended so diligently for the last 45 years.
The land comprising Discovery Park has been traversing an ever-changing path for 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age and will continue to become what society chooses for it in generations to come. In the beginning, its name was Nature.
An old-growth forest arose, and glacial moraines and bluffs began collapsing to form the beaches and marshes which, starting at least 3,000 years ago, indigenous peoples visited for the plant and animal bounty found there. One of its many names then, to the Duwamish, was Pka-dzEltcu (thrust far out).
To Navy explorers in 1841, it was West Point.
Settlement in 1851 brought eventual logging and farming until the land was developed in 1898 to join a string of forts protecting Puget Sound. It then gained another name – Fort Lawton.
A short building boom gave us the now-remaining familiar historic buildings by 1910. A quiet interlude gave way to another war-mandated expansion to hold troops and their affairs in over 500 buildings. Many were demolished in the 1940s and what remained stayed in use by the Army and Navy until the Government was ready to give up most of the fort to civic partners in Seattle for a Park but that process took years of work by many visionary partners, people and organizations in order to make a large open-space park a reality in 1973. The next name it had was Discovery Park.
Much still needed to be accomplished to undo the massive footprint of concrete, asphalt and buildings to start restoring the land to a semblance of its former glory and that work has been guided from the beginning by a visionary Master Plan which established that Discovery Park would become (and remain) a place of quiet and tranquility and a haven for native plants and animals.
Many more buildings were torn down and a Historic District was established to preserve the silent sentinels of the early Fort Lawton. Hundreds of plant restoration projects large and small were accomplished by volunteers, the City and organizations in the 1980s and 1990s and 2000s and many more remain in order to keep the Park evolving, not to what it was before 1851, but to a “third place” that is sustainable in the current climate and society.
We expect the Master Plan to keep us on that path and to be the inspiration for the highly-developed metropolis that now surrounds Discovery Park to value it for the qualities so eloquently laid out in the Plan.
We celebrated the 45th Anniversary of Discovery Park in 2018, its Master Plan and all the people and organizations whose hard work created the Park and Plan and who will defend it in perpetuity. We hope its final name will always be Discovery Park.
— Tom Palm
Green Seattle Partnership Forest Steward, Discovery Park
Protecting Discovery Park for Future Generations
Tom’s reflection captures what makes Discovery Park unique. It’s not simply a collection of trails, trees, and views; it’s a landscape shaped by history, community action, and generations of people who believed it was worth protecting.
Today, volunteers, restoration partners, and advocates continue this work by caring for the park’s forests, meadows, shorelines, and wildlife habitat. Learn more about how you can get involved in protecting Discovery Park and supporting its future.
Stay connected with Friends of Discovery Park by signing up for our newsletter to receive restoration updates, volunteer opportunities, and stories from Seattle’s largest urban park.