Improvements are on the way to the Haley property on the shores of Case Inlet, a 178-acre undeveloped state park-managed property. Washington State Parks has won a grant to fund the construction of a small parking lot, picnic shelter, and bathroom facility at the trailhead on Jackson Lake Road NW. The agency will also improve the trail that leads the road to 1,980 feet of shoreline.
Known mostly only to locals, the Haley property sits just south of Dutcher Cove. Without a boat, it is currently accessible only by a difficult-to-spot trail near the Jackson Lake public fishing access. The trail passes through a mosaic of upland forest before dropping into a richly vegetated gully. Intrepid hikers are rewarded when it emerges at a tidal estuary surrounded by forest. Finally, the trail reaches a driftwood-topped beach with extensive tide flats.
The property’s name, which is a placeholder, honors the family that owned it and recreated in cabins along its shoreline until the early 1980s when it was donated to Washington State Parks. J.C. Haley, a Tacoma businessman cofounded Brown & Haley in 1914, the Tacoma candy company behind Almond Roca.
State Parks has not had the budget to develop the Haley property until now. The property is considered a State Park Property rather than a designated state park — hence its name being an unofficial placeholder.
The grant came through the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office in a competitive process. It is associated with property acquisition that occurred in 2022 that added four parcels near Jackson Lake Road to the parkland.
The 21-stall parking lot will sit just off Jackson Lake Road with a park sign and steel gate. The picnic shelter and concrete restroom will be next to the parking lot, along with an information kiosk.
Improvements to the trail are limited to its upper half and include widening it to State Park standards and improving the tread, with minor reroutes in a few locations. Where the trail begins to drop into a gully, the plan proposes a gazebo overlook.
Beyond the overlook, the trail will remain unchanged except for the addition of dimensional lumber stairs to a particularly steep section and an elevated boardwalk over a marshy corner of the estuary.
According to Sarah Fronk, State Parks communication manager, construction is anticipated to be completed in 2025.
An environmental impacts review is currently underway, along with tribal outreach and archaeological surveys in the parking lot area.
“There are over a million people within an hour’s drive of the park,” Fronk said. “It’s an opportunity to expand access to nature for a growing population and we hope the park will help enrich the local community with more opportunities to experience outdoor recreation without having to travel long distances.”
She added, “It will serve as the main trail system run by State Parks on the Key Peninsula.”
For Dutcher Cove resident Jim Bellamy, the beach at the Haley property offers the best swimming on the Key Peninsula. “I remember Haley Cove from the `60s, back when I was in high school,” he said. The Haley family had primitive cabins on the shoreline then, and he would visit a friend there to go waterskiing and swimming. “Saltwater was our playground.”
He sees pontoon boats and barbecues using the beach today and believes that one of State Parks’ more realistic options for sensitively developing the park would be to anchor a few mooring buoys for boaters to use, like at McMicken Island Marine State Park across the inlet. He was glad to hear that State Parks will not build a road to the beach.
“They have to be realistic about it,” he said, adding that with steep slopes and wetlands, the upland part of the beach would probably be impossible to develop anyway. He worries that without vehicular access, State Parks will struggle to keep the trail maintained and trash-free, but said it is important to have the trail so that everyone without a boat can enjoy the beach.
Fronk said that State Parks has done a Classification and Management Plan for the Haley property. The CAMP process, which determines the development plan for a property and identifies adjoining parcels to acquire when they become available, involved numerous opportunities for public input.
“The response to development at Haley was positive, provided that Parks would make an effort to minimize impacts to the forest,” she said. “Neighbors specifically requested that the Haley property be developed only in areas that had been recently logged and that the park be kept relatively small. The development plan has followed these requests.”
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