Drive out to the 16th Avenue access on the Yakima Greenway this month and you'll find two things happening at once. Fresh gravel and new picnic shelters are going in at the Tamaki Viewpoint, the biggest capital project the Greenway has seen in years. And two weeks ago, that same stretch of trail was closed by fire crews working through the night.
Both things are true. Neither cancels the other out. If you use this corridor for a morning walk, a bike commute, or a Saturday with the dog, the useful thing to know isn't that the Greenway is getting better or that it's had a rough summer. It's that the newest, most improved section of the trail right now is also the one most likely to shut down on you without warning, and knowing why changes how you plan a visit to the north end this fall.
What's actually new at the 16th Avenue access
The Tamaki Viewpoint has been under construction since fall 2025, and Konnor Hopkins, executive director of the Yakima Greenway Foundation, told residents at an April community night at Rooted Yakima Valley that it would be finished this year. When it's done, the site will have six picnic areas with shelters, two new spur trails down to the Naches River, a new restroom, a new gateway and interpretive signage, and parking lot lighting. Crews have been reseating and striping the lot and restoring the grounds with native plants.
It's not the only upgrade landing on the Greenway this year. Sarg Hubbard Park, the busiest park in the system and home to the Greenway's visitor center, was slated to be fully lit by the end of summer 2026, a project Greenway officials said would extend safe use of the park into the evening hours year round. Walkers and cyclists have also seen a few miles of fresh pavement laid down along the pathway this year, on top of routine cleanup after river flooding in December 2025 and March 2026 temporarily covered sections of the trail near the water.
That flooding, for what it's worth, didn't do lasting damage. Hopkins said the pathway held up fine and that any silt or debris left behind has since been cleared. The bigger disruption to this corridor didn't come from the river.
The same stretch went dark for two days in August
On the night of August 18 into the morning of August 19, three separate fires broke out within a few hundred feet of each other along the Greenway, closer to North Sixth Avenue than to North 16th. Yakima Fire Department Capt. Jeremiah Stilley described the response.
"There were three separate fires within a few hundred feet of each other. It's a heavily wooded area with cottonwood trees, a lot of fuels."
Crews worked through the night to put out what grew into a three to four acre burn, and the fire department closed the Greenway between the North Sixth Avenue and North 16th Avenue entrances while they worked. Investigators called the fire suspicious and asked the public for tips. Nearby power lines had to be de-energized, cutting service to some residents along the way. By Wednesday afternoon, burned vegetation was still visible off Highway 12, the road the Greenway's northern spur loosely parallels on its way toward Naches.
No one was hurt. But the closure landed directly on top of the same access point where the Tamaki Viewpoint is being built, which is the point worth sitting with. The corridor getting the newest amenities on the Greenway right now is the corridor with the least predictable access.
Why this particular stretch keeps catching fire
This wasn't a one-off. The Rotary playground along the Greenway burned in March 2024, causing an estimated $400,000 in damages, and as of this spring Greenway officials had no update on whether or when it would be rebuilt. A separate fire on June 20, 2024, came close enough to the Greenway's visitor center to raise alarm, a building that had already been damaged once before in a 2020 fire. Fire officials have pointed to a mix of dense cottonwood cover and human activity as recurring factors. Yakima Deputy Fire Chief Chris Hutsell told reporters in 2024 that a number of the fires along the Greenway could be traced to warming and cooking fires from people camping in the corridor, which is why Yakima County adopted an ordinance banning overnight camping there in 2013 and tightened it further in 2023.
None of this makes the Greenway unsafe to use on a normal day. Police officials who spoke at the April community night pointed out that violent incidents along the trail are rare and that, statistically, the corridor holds up fine against comparable public spaces. What it does mean is that the wooded, riverside stretch running north from around Sixth Avenue toward the Naches, the same stretch where the newest investment is landing, has a track record of brush fires that the rest of the 20-mile system doesn't share to the same degree.
Reading the trail before you leave the house
The Greenway runs about 20 miles from Naches down to Union Gap and includes eight parks and multiple river access points, which means a closure on the north end doesn't have to end your walk. It just means picking a different entrance.
- Sarg Hubbard Park, off South 18th Street, sits at the center of the system and is the busiest single access point regardless of what's happening farther north.
- Sherman Park, about a mile south of Sarg Hubbard, has its own picnic area and an off-leash dog area.
- Myron Lake and Rotary Lake offer river and lake access away from the 16th Avenue corridor entirely.
If you're specifically headed for the new Tamaki Viewpoint once it opens, it's worth a quick check of the Yakima Greenway Foundation's own updates before you drive out, especially through the rest of fire season. Cottonwood stands don't stay this dry forever, but late summer and early fall are exactly when a few sparks turn into a multi-acre closure fast.
What this means if you live here
The honest version of this story isn't a warning to stay away. It's that the Greenway is investing real money in the part of the trail that needs it least predictably, and that's worth knowing before you build a routine around a brand-new picnic shelter that might not be reachable on a given Tuesday. The Tamaki Viewpoint will be a genuinely good addition when it's finished. It just sits in the one corridor on this trail system that has earned a habit of closing without much notice.
That's the kind of detail that doesn't show up on a map or a parks department brochure. It shows up when you've watched this particular stretch of river for a while, which is most of what living in Yakima long enough actually teaches you.
If you're the kind of person who tracks these small shifts in your own neighborhood, whether it's a new trailhead or the way a corridor behaves in August, you already understand what it means to know a place instead of just living in it. Cory Bemis and his team pay that same kind of attention to the Yakima County housing market. If a question ever comes up about what's changing in your part of town, reach out.
