Snohomish County Parks and Recreation Department notes that there currently is no beach access at Meadowdale Beach Park
The pedestrian access tunnel is now closed. The rest of the 108-acre park remains open. Puget Sound beach access is available at Picnic Point County Park.
The tunnel is closed to allow for salmon passage. Meadowdale Beach Park is located at 6026 156th St. S.W. in Edmonds.
I should also point out that the fines that are handed out for illegally crossing the railroad tracks are a thousand dollars a shot. So… think twice before you do that. There is a ranger that lives on site and I doubt he likes giving those out, but crossing train tracks is extremely dangerous and people are killed doing it all the time.
I assume the closure is temporary. Any idea when it will be reopened?
They close it every winter when the flow of that stream exceeds the capacity of the channel under the floor… then they remove the planks inside the tunnel and the stream owns it until sometime in the spring again. I believe they close it both for people’s safety and to protect salmon eggs from getting trampled/disturbed.
Everytime somebody walks to the Edmonds waterfront they cross railroad tracks. I guess we should all be given thousand-dollar fines, right?
Ridiculous. The train tracks by the Meadowdale Beach Park are the property of Burlington Northern and are not under the jurisdiction of the park ranger. If you were going to be given a ticket, you would have to be caught and arrested by Burlington Northern Railroad Police who would then refer the case to the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Department who would then cite you for trespassing. They don’t have the manpower or the cause to wait at the tracks to cite people.
The tracks are not dangerous if you have enough sense to step off the railroad track when a train comes by. The visibility is fine there and you can see and hear trains coming for miles.
The beach is easily accessible when the tunnel is “closed.”