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The Burke-Gilman Trail is Seattle's signature rail trail, a paved route of about 21 miles from Golden Gardens Park on Puget Sound to Bothell Landing on the Sammamish River. It follows the old Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern grade along the Lake Washington Ship Canal, past Gas Works Park on Lake Union and through the University of Washington campus, then bends north along the west shore of Lake Washington through Lake Forest Park and Kenmore. The grade is rail flat the whole way. Expect company: this is a busy commuter and recreation corridor. In Ballard a 1.4 mile gap known as the Missing Link still sends riders onto city streets between the Ballard Locks and Northwest 45th Street.
Burke-Gilman Trail
Your comfort. Prognosticated.
-Cory
In a typical year the Burke-Gilman Trail has about 121 to 214 days of excellent weather for popular activities such as dog walking, running, hiking, biking, birding, e-biking, and walking, with May, July, and August the best months.
Hourly comfort scores for the next 15 days of weather, tuned to your activity and your own thresholds.
Plan your visit to this trail. Get the best windows for a comfortable outing.
Enjoy the Burke-Gilman Trail!
There is too little deciduous tree cover along the Burke-Gilman Trail to measure a peak color window. The trail has 4% deciduous coverage, with the majority being bigleaf maple and red alder.
Coal for the University of Washington steam plant was about all the trains still hauled when Burlington Northern asked to abandon this line in 1971. On April 15, 1885, Judge Thomas Burke, Daniel Gilman and their partners incorporated the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway to give the young city its own line north to the Canadian border. They laid the track along the shores of Lake Union and Lake Washington because the ground was level and freight could load straight from the docks. By 1887 the rails reached around the north end of the lake through Bothell, and in 1888 they reached the coal mines at Gilman, now Issaquah. Timber and coal from the Cascade foothills rolled down this grade to the Seattle waterfront. The Great Northern absorbed the company in the 1890s, the Northern Pacific took the line in 1913, and traffic stayed heavy into the early 1960s. When the 1971 abandonment notice came, Matthews Beach families who already walked the tracks organized to buy the right of way. Neighbors predicted crime and lost property values, but Seattle, King County and the University of Washington built it anyway. The first 12.1 miles from Gas Works Park to Tracy Owen Station in Kenmore opened on August 19, 1978. It has since grown west to Golden Gardens and east to Blyth Park in Bothell, where the Sammamish River Trail takes over. In 2008 it entered the Rail-Trail Hall of Fame. The Ballard Missing Link remains unbuilt.
Sammamish River TrailCheshiahud Lake Union LoopElliott Bay TrailShip Canal Trail
