Tolt MacDonald Park

Located along the East bank of the Snoqualmie River, Tolt MacDonald has picnic tables and fire-pits, overnight campsites, soccer fields, and a historic barn used for events. A 500-foot suspension bridge crosses the Snoqualmie River. The park’s wetlands offer great birdwatching, and are a key habitat for resident and migratory birds. 

Before white settlement, the park was one of several large permanent wintering villages of the Snoqualmie people in the Snoqualmie Valley. In January 2022, the Snoqualmie Tribe announced it had acquired 12,000 acres in the Tolt Watershed with the intent of re-establishing tribal stewardship.

The Tolt River is the largest salmon-bearing tributary to the Snoqualmie River and a key part of the Snohomish River Basin. During the fall, visitors today can observe Chinook salmon spawning in the river’s high-quality habitat while eagles and osprey soar above. Each year, nearly 20 percent of the Snoqualmie Watershed’s threatened Chinook salmon return to the Tolt to spawn.

Tolt-MacDonald Park is the site of the Lower Tolt River Floodplain Restoration Project. In 2009 the City of Seattle and King County partnered to complete the Lower Tolt River Floodplain Reconnection Project in King County’s Tolt-MacDonald Park. The project set back approximately 2,500 feet (half a mile) of levee along the Tolt River, restoring natural processes to nearly 50 acres of floodplain habitat important to spawning and rearing salmon.