Islanders celebrate completion of Dockton park improvements

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, June 9, 2026

Families, boaters and long-time islanders celebrated the completion of a $6.5 million make-over of Dockton Park and Marina on Saturday, welcoming improvements that will make King County’s only publicly owned marina safer for users and healthier for sea life.

Under cloudy skies, islanders explored the marina’s recently installed grated decks — better for sea life because they let sunlight reach the water — and a fenced playground that keeps kids safe while parents relax.

“We love the playground. We love that it’s fenced,” said Theresa Leahey, while nursing her 3-month-old baby.

“It’s been a long-time coming,” she said of the multi-year project. “It’s so nice to be here to celebrate all of this work that’s come to fruition.”

Marie Browne, an islander who moved to Dockton as a high schooler, was also thrilled by the project. “I think it’s fantastic. This is such a valuable resource.”

The project, which began more than six years ago, entailed two phases. The first one focused on improvements to the dock — removing ecologically harmful creosote piers, installing steel piles and plastic grating, building a new swim dock and adding a state-of-the-art fire suppression system. The second phase wrapped up late last year, bringing a rebuilt breakwater, new finger piers, an upgraded boat ramp dock and a reconstructed floating moorage dock into service.

Along the way, the playground was also reconfigured. With input from over 200 community members, according to King County Parks staff, the county added new slides, swings, a net climber, musical instruments and a spinning rope climber. Volunteers helped to landscape the area with native plants, installing sword fern, Oregon grape and evergreen huckleberry.

Warren Jimenez, who heads King County Parks, attended Saturday’s event. As he stood on the cement walkway between the playground and the water, he said he looked forward to a busy summer at the park, the first one “with all these improvements completed.”

The 30-slip marina is a regional attraction, he said, both because it is publicly owned and bordered by hundreds of acres of protected lands. Across the road from the park is the 86-acre Dockton Forest, which connects to the 275-acre Maury Island Natural Area. Twelve miles of trails wend through the forest.

“It’s a unique and historic place,” Jimenez said. “We needed to make this investment.”

Funding came from a few different sources, he said, including the state Recreation and Conservation Office and the King County Parks, Recreation, Trails and Open Space Levy.

Jimenez said he was grateful for the support. “King County voters and key funding partners allowed us to make this investment.”

Saturday’s event included a showing from the Quartermaster Yacht Club — members sailed nine different boats from the marina in Inner Quartermaster Harbor to Dockton in Outer Quartermaster. Visitors got to tour the boats, which were moored at the marina, including the classic Vashona, a 46-year-old trawler owned by Vashon historian Bruce Haulman.

As he sat in his boat, welcoming the occasional visitor, he said he was pleased not only by the new marina, but by years of conservation and restoration work in Dockton, which have transformed what was once a working waterfront into a natural shoreline.

He nodded towards the remains of a cement foundation on the shoreline, where Greg Rabourn, the Vashon basin steward for King County, spearheaded a project to remove a bulkhead and recover a remnant saltmarsh. The county’s project at the marina, he added, removed another 150 feet of pilings.

As a result, a natural beach, nearly uninterrupted by bulkheads, now stretches from Raab’s Lagoon to the Dockton Marina, he said. “It’s wonderful to see both,” he said. “You can have recreational access and restore the shoreline. That’s the power of what the county can do.”

Among Saturday’s visitors was Christie True, who retired nearly three years ago as the director of King County’s Department of Natural Resources and Parks.

“It’s a gem for us to have this in the public domain,” she said.

True recently joined the board of the Washington Water Trust, which works to protect and restore rivers and streams across the state, and she said she comes to a place like Dockton with a keen awareness of the kinds of problems that mar most waterfronts. In other parts of Puget Sound, she noted, one often sees strings of private docks, harming the habitat herring and other forage fish need to survive.

“There are still a lot of herring and salmon that live here in Quartermaster Harbor,” she said. The publicly owned marina, by consolidating moorage slips, makes a huge difference. “It’s a lot better than everyone having their own dock.”

Leslie Brown is a former editor of The Beachcomber.