Beat the heat at Seattle's 'hidden beaches,' the pearls of the city's shoreline

On a balmy, cloudless June day in Seattle, 14-year-old Grayson Niccolls and her friends laid out their beach towels. The deep blue water of Lake Washington lapped gently on soft sand, a rarity in these parts. They were a few feet from a thick tree canopy that offered shade.

The girls had just come from another, more popular beach.

"At the other beach, there was a guy that was, like, filming us. So, we left and came here," Grayson said. "It's quiet, and I feel, like, not uncomfortable tanning."

"Here" was East Harrison Street Shoreline Street End (at 39th Avenue East and East Harrison Street) – colloquially known as Hidden Beach. It's one of about 140 shoreline street ends in Seattle, literally where the city’s streets meet the shore. Some end in small parks, others in pristine little beaches, like Hidden Beach.

Street ends can be found along the Fremont Cut out to Salmon Bay. They're tucked away on the shorelines of Lake Washington and Lake Union, snuggled between homes, and they're in plain sight elsewhere. The area where the Burke-Gilman Trail runs under the Fremont Bridge? That's the Fremont Avenue North street end. The end of Perkins Lane West in Magnolia? That’s a primo spot at the end of a steep gravel path, offering unobstructed views of Puget Sound.

Check out some of the best spots here. (Try refreshing your browser if the map does not immediately appear below.)

Omar Akkari has been the Shoreline Street Ends Program coordinator for the Seattle Department of Transportation for five years.

"I'm a landscape architect, which is usually the kind of the person who's been filling this role," he said. "It has a lot of different touch points, from permitting, construction drawings, and lots of work parties and habitat management."

Back in 1889, when Washington became a state, the federal government gave it ownership of about 3,000 miles of shoreline. Much of that has been ceded to private owners, but there are still public slices today.

In 1996, a group of Seattle residents argued that the City Council should protect these public waterfront spaces. The Council agreed and approved Resolution 29370, which designated shoreline street ends for "public uses and enjoyment."

Thus, the Shoreline Street Ends Program under the Seattle Department of Transportation was born. It’s funded through the fees collected for commercial use of the property and residential encroachments on the boundaries of the street ends.

READ PART TWO OF THIS MINI-SERIES: How rich Seattleites can lease public land through a program meant to protect it

For example, the Port of Seattle pays more than $100,000 a year to run its operations that exist on street ends.

There are residential encroachments, too, where homeowners have crossed over the property line and built on public land. These are often considerably smaller, costing as little as a couple hundred bucks a year, Akkari said, although some are certainly larger and more expensive to permit. The smallest residential encroachment he could recall was a lamppost someone had put in on street end property.

The priciest permit: $120,000 a year for a residential encroachment on half of their neighboring street end or more, according to SDOT.

Because the program is run on fees – Akkari said there are no tax dollars involved – volunteers have played a key role in the program since successfully lobbying for it in the 90s. So, while Akkari and his colleagues handle all this bureaucracy running in the background, a dogged group of street-end advocates are looking for the next generation to take up the cause.

FRIENDS OF HIDDEN BEACH

Hidden Beach is nestled among the fancy homes and landscaping of a certain class of Seattleite on the winding, manicured streets of Madison Park and Madrona. Zipping down the 39th Avenue East hill, visitors to Hidden Beach just might miss the trail down to the water if they’re not paying attention. The public entrance is narrow, marked with signs that declare "SHORE VIEW" and remind visitors that bonfires are illegal there, that they must keep their pets on a leash, and to pick up after themselves.

The beach is small, just about 110 feet wide, and its semi-secret nature means Grayson and her friends were the only occupants that sunny afternoon.

Grayson’s mom, Kyleen Niccolls, joined them at Hidden Beach and appreciated that level of privacy for her daughter and her friends.

"These are young teenagers who are turning into young women," she said. "I want them to have the freedom to be themselves and wear whatever bathing suit they want and express themselves however they want to – and feel safe doing that."

As the girls sunbathed – and even took a brave dip in the still-frigid water – longtime Hidden Beach devotee Libby Sinclair walked down the short, wooded trail that leads to the little spit of sand. Almost immediately, Sinclair made a pitch to Kyleen Niccolls to join the volunteer group that cares for the beach, aptly called Friends of Hidden Beach.

Whereas Niccolls and the girls had only just discovered the beach, Sinclair has been enjoying it since the 70s.

"We've tried to keep it just how it was always, which is green, a little hidden from the street, but safe," Sinclair said.

That suits both young people, like Grayson Niccolls, who are looking for their own special place in an ever-growing city, and watchful parents like Kyleen Niccolls.

"They're at an age where they want to be more independent and kind of feral, if you will, like feral cats," she joked, drawing outraged exclamations from the four teenage girls listening in. "It's great that they have this space."

Hidden Beach visitors were surveyed in 2021 about what they’d like to see changed or updated. For the most part, they seemed to like the beach as it is and mostly asked that it be protected for public use. This literal hidden gem has a special place in people’s hearts.

"I've been coming to this spot since I was a child," one person wrote. "This is my home away from home."

"I always run into a neighbor I haven't seen for some time and it's such a pleasant place to catch up," another said.

Someone else said their children and, later, their grandchildren learned to swim there. "Now, my husband and I go as a stopover on walks. We sit or stand, gaze and remember. We marvel at the beauty of our city."

It's these little moments that make Hidden Beach – and all the shoreline street ends – special to Sinclair.

"One of the misunderstandings about [Hidden Beach] is that it's the people who live along here, who own waterfront property, are the people who use this beach," she said. "The truth is that people walk here or drive here from, you know, any number of places – Madrona, Leschi, Madison Park, but also Capitol Hill, Ravenna, Beacon Hill. One family told me they came from Tacoma because... this is the best place they know to come and hang out for the day."

FRIENDS IN YOUNG PLACES

Marty Oppenheimer is one of the leaders of Friends of Street Ends – not to be confused with Friends of Hidden Beach, though they are, in fact, friends. Oppenheimer got involved with the group in the 90s and has been working with the Friends group for close to 30 years to improve shoreline street ends. That includes raising money and organizing volunteers.

But Oppenheimer acknowledged the group could be better about recruiting new members.

He's in his 70s and guessed that the youngest members of the Friends of Street Ends steering committee are in their 60s. They need a new generation of residents who care enough to take on the work.

"It's critical that somehow we get the word out," he said, "so that people who love these street ends know that there's a group advocating for the street ends."

Omar Akkari with SDOT said the program started thanks to "a ragtag group of folks," and now, they’'re trying to teach a new crop of advocates to carry on the work.

"That's my main goal with these folks," Akkari said. "Let's get some new energy into the program."

Oppenheimer hopes they can. Protecting these spaces has been a passion for years, and one he believes in even more today as Seattle continues to grow – in population and in wealth, especially along the shoreline.

While homeowners are permitted by the city to encroach onto the public spaces, and pay for the privilege, Oppenheimer and the various Friends worry that wealthy street-end neighbors are effectively able to "throw more money and lawyers" at these spaces than the volunteers can. And from Oppenheimer’s perspective, that goes against the intention of the street ends: for "public uses and enjoyment."

"Why do I care so much?" he said. "Because I love these spaces, because I think public access is important, because I don’t like to see money triumphing over the public’s interest."

This part one of two in a mini-series on Seattle’s shoreline street ends. Read part two here.