New Stottlemeyer Trailhead opens at Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park

A new trailhead into Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park is now open, adding expanded parking and a revamped entry into the recreational draw for North Kitsap.

The trailhead , which spans 1.2 acres, is located off of Stottlemeyer Road at the southeast corner of the popular 3,500-acre park. It connects directly to the park's network of multi-use trails.

The trailhead's parking lot contains 25 standard parking stalls, as well as ADA-accessible spots and five pull-through stalls intended for horse trailers.

In the past, there was roadside parking available at the current location of the Stottlemeyer trailhead, but it was limited and less accessible.

In an email to the Kitsap Sun, Kitsap County Parks director Alex Wisniewski wrote that the trailhead — which cost approximately $490,000 — will "help distribute visitor traffic more evenly throughout the park, reducing congestion in other areas and minimizing environmental impact on more sensitive regions."

Currently, the park's only other formal parking lot, the Bay View trailhead off of Highway 104, "is overburdened during the busy summer season and weekends throughout the year," according to Wisniewski.

The Stottlemeyer trailhead enhancement is part of the Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park Framework, an ongoing effort to transform the park, which has long been used for commercial logging. The county unveiled plans for an extensive restoration of the park about three years ago. Some of the proposed changes, such as trails exclusively for mountain bikers , have already been made. Others, like the gradual reintroduction of natural landscapes, will take decades to enact.

According to an executive summary published by the county commissioner's office and the Kitsap Parks Department, the overall goal of the PGFHP Framework is to facilitate "the incremental evolution of the landscape from a forest managed for commercial timber production toward a safe and sustainable community park that will support the overall health of Kitsap County, the people, and the environment for generations." The Port Gamble S'Klallam and Suquamish tribes are listed as partners in the framework.

Wisniewski wrote that the county plans to open a third trailhead in 2025, to continue to improve access to the park. The Gateway trailhead will be located just inside the north park boundary, and will be accessed using the recently constructed Carver Drive.

"Together, these three trailheads will be the primary locations for access to the multi-use trail network and the mountain bike ride park facility in Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park," Wisniewski wrote.

Wisniewski added that the county's intent was to design all park trailheads "to blend in with the surrounding natural landscape of the park as much as possible." To that end, the trailheads "are not paved and will be dirt parking lots with natural plantings and elements to help elicit the look and feel of the park landscape."

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: New Stottlemeyer Trailhead opens at Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park