Getting there
Hop on light rail and step off at Sound Transit's Beacon Hill station at Beacon Avenue South and South Lander Street, an easy car-free trip from downtown to the north end. From there, follow Beacon Avenue, the neighborhood's main spine, past a lineup of Chinese, Vietnamese and Filipino businesses.
Things to Do on the Hill
Most of what draws people up here is outdoors. The parks are spread across the ridge, so you can easily stitch together a walk, a round of golf and a stop for the view in a single afternoon.
Jefferson Park and its Olmsted golf course
Start at the top of the hill in Jefferson Park, which spreads across 52.4 acres. Roll a few ends on the lawn bowling green, watch skaters at the skate sculpture, or let the kids loose on Beacon Mountain Playground. You will also find tennis courts, playfields, a community center and newer park space built over a covered reservoir.
Golfers can tee off at the Jefferson Park Golf Course, a public course designed by the Olmsted Brothers that opened in 1915. Pro golfer Fred Couples grew up in the neighborhood and played it as his home course as a teenager. Check with the course directly for tee times and current rates.
Beacon Food Forest
Just west of Jefferson Park, wander through the Beacon Food Forest, about 7 acres of walnuts, chestnuts, berry shrubs and vegetables that rank among the largest food forest projects in the nation. Planting began in 2012, and volunteers tend it year-round as part of the city's P-Patch network of shared gardens.
Viewpoints worth the climb
When the sky clears, the ridge opens onto downtown, the Industrial District, Elliott Bay, First Hill and the Rainier Valley, with Mount Rainier and the Olympics lining the horizon. Two parks frame those views especially well.
- Dr. Jose Rizal Park looks west over downtown, Elliott Bay and the Olympic Mountains. Bring a bike, because it is also the starting point for a path toward the I-90 bridge, Lake Washington and Mercer Island.
- Daejeon Park on North Beacon Hill honors Seattle's sister city in South Korea. Its pagoda, a gift from 1998, stands beside an open lawn that faces Mount Rainier.
Green trails and smaller parks
For a wooded walk on the east side of the hill, follow the Cheasty Greenbelt and the Cheasty Boulevard Trail. Back in the center, the Beacon Avenue median doubles as a landscaped walking trail.
Smaller neighborhood parks fill in the gaps. Lewis Park on 15th Ave S sits a short walk from Sturgus Park, Daejeon Park and Dr. Jose Rizal Park. Farther south, Benefit Playground lies within a mile of Kubota Garden and Rainier Beach Playfield.
The gardening spirit here reaches well beyond the food forest. The city's P-Patch program runs several plots on the hill, and two of them have been growing since the program's early years in 1974.
The NewHolly area adds several more shared gardens, including a community market garden, so growing food is woven into daily life all across the ridge.
History Written in Street Names
Long before the streets were mapped, the Duwamish called this hill "Greenish-Yellow Spine," likely for the deciduous trees that once covered it. Early settlers John Holgate and Edward Hanford arrived in the 1850s, and you can still trace their names on South Holgate and Hanford Streets. A later resident, M. Harwood Young, renamed the ridge after Beacon Hill in his hometown of Boston.
The story under Beacon Avenue
As you stroll the wide Beacon Avenue median, you are walking above the route of a wooden pipe laid along the ridgeline in 1901 to carry Cedar River drinking water. Streetcars rolled along the avenue from 1931 to 1941. By the 1950s, utility poles crowded it so thickly that it was nicknamed a pole forest, until the city moved them and landscaped the median in the 1970s and 1980s.
From Boeing Hill to today
In the 1950s and 1960s, so many residents worked at the nearby Boeing plant that people called this Boeing Hill. As many of those workers moved to the suburbs, Asian immigrant families settled in. The 2000 census counted about 22,300 residents in a mix that was 51 percent Asian, 20 percent white, 13 percent Black and 9 percent Hispanic or Latino.
Landmarks and Architecture to Spot
Take a walk through North Beacon Hill, where most homes date to the early 1900s, and look for Craftsman bungalows alongside Seattle box houses, the city's own take on the Foursquare style.
- Pacific Tower crowns the north tip of the hill. Built as a marine hospital, it later served as Amazon's headquarters for ten years.
- El Centro de la Raza, a civil rights and community service organization, makes its home in the former Beacon Hill School from 1904.
- Beacon Hill First Baptist Church is a 1910 Tudor Revival landmark designed by architect Ellsworth Storey.
- The Frank D. Black property is a designated landmark known for river rock structures built in 1914.
- Comet Lodge Cemetery dates to 1895.
- East is West, an outdoor mosaic by Val Laigo, brings public art to the neighborhood.
City landmark records also list the Rainier Cold Storage and Seattle Brewing and Malting building, Fire Station #13, Cleveland High School and the Turner-Koepf House, also known as the Beacon Hill Garden House.
Library, Arts and Community Life
Drop by the Beacon Hill branch of the Seattle Public Library, which reopened in a new building at a new location in 2005, or the NewHolly branch serving the southern part of the hill. Check the library's website for current hours.
The Beacon Arts Guild, a local nonprofit, organizes cultural events and supports affordable housing and studio space for artists. In the 2010s, its summer series Beacon Rocks brought monthly performances to the Roberto Maestas Festival Street. In 2012, the American Planning Association named Beacon Hill one of 30 Great Places in America.
The hill is also home to the Seattle Division of the VA Puget Sound Health Care System and to Beacon Hill International Elementary, a K-5 school known for its bilingual programs.
