The Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust leads and inspires action to conserve and enhance the landscape from Seattle across the Cascade Mountains to Central Washington.
The Mountains to Sound Greenway is the 1.5 million-acre landscape connecting Puget Sound and central Washington. Its natural lands, rivers, and communities define who we are and how we live. The Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust leads and inspires action to conserve and enhance the landscape, ensuring a long-term balance between people and nature. Founded in 1991, the Greenway Trust works to preserve rural lifestyles, promote public land acquisitions, connect a continuous regional trail system, teach people of all ages about the importance of conserving forests and wildlife by creating new parks and trails and mobilizing thousands of volunteers.
Over the last year, more than 4,000 volunteers—over half were youth— donated over 41,000 hours to enhancing public natural areas and recreation sites throughout the Greenway, including planting over 22,500 new native trees and shrubs. An additional 5,100 King County school children participated in our popular Environmental Education program, combining classroom and field work in inquiry-based natural science exploration and problem solving.
The Mountains to Sound Greenway vision has inspired public investment of millions of dollars to save farms and forest lands through purchase and conservation easements. Since 1991, the successful acquisition of over 160,000 acres and another 100,000 acres protected through conservation easements, has created a model for urban/rural coexistence with a total of over 900,000 acres of connected public lands managed for the public’s benefit. In 1998 the unique history, abundant recreation, beautiful scenery and vision of the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust earned 100 miles of Interstate 90 the designation of National Scenic Byway, the first interstate highway so honored. Some of the regional “icon” properties acquired with the support of the Greenway Trust include historic Meadowbrook Farm in the Snoqualmie Valley; several properties zoned for highway commercial at the entrance to the state’s most popular hiking trailhead on Tiger Mountain; Preston Mill on the banks of the Raging River just east of Issaquah; the forested backdrop of major tourist attraction Snoqualmie Falls; and Snoqualmie Point Park just south of I-90 Exit 27, one of the most spectacular and accessible viewpoints in King County.
We lead and inspire action to conserve and enhance the 1.5 million acre Greenway landscape from Seattle across the Cascade Mountains to Central Washington, ensuring a long-term balance between people and nature.