If you've seen posts this summer about the Green River Trail being closed, here's what actually changed: a construction closure that started June 22 and runs through October 31, 2026 sits entirely inside Fort Dent Park, in Tukwila, well north of the Kent city line. The stretch that Kent residents actually use for morning runs, dog walks along Van Doren's Landing Park, or the weekend ride down toward Auburn hasn't moved.
That gap between what the headlines imply and what's actually on the ground is worth understanding, because it says something true about how this trail works. The Green River Trail reads on a map like a single 19-mile ribbon running from Cecil Moses Park near Seattle's south boundary down to North Green River Park in south Kent. In practice, it's a chain of separately owned, separately maintained segments that happen to share a riverbank. A problem at one link doesn't mean the chain is broken.
What's Actually Closing, and Where
The closure is tied to a specific piece of infrastructure: the Fort Dent Levee, which sits on the right bank of the Green River in Tukwila and protects the trail, Fort Dent Park, and the Starfire Sports complex from erosion and flooding. That levee has taken damage in three separate flood events since 2019, most recently in 2025, and the King County Flood Control District is now funding a repair and stabilization project that runs June 22 through October 31, 2026.
During that window, the Green River Trail is fully closed at Fort Dent Park. The county's posted detour routes trail users onto Interurban Ave S, with signage marking the way back to the river once past the construction zone. There's also a temporary path inside the park itself, but it comes with real limits: it's pedestrian-only, cyclists have to dismount and walk their bikes through, it's not wheelchair accessible, and it gets closed intermittently whenever crews need the space.
None of that touches Kent.
The Kent Stretch Nobody Needs to Reroute
Here's what's still open and unaffected, from north to south:
| Location | City | Status through October 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Fort Dent Park | Tukwila | Fully closed on the trail; pedestrian-only detour path inside the park |
| Briscoe Park | Kent (city's northernmost trail park) | Open |
| Van Doren's Landing Park | Kent | Open |
| Three Friends Fishing Hole | Kent | Open |
| North Green River Park | South Kent, near Auburn | Open |
Briscoe Park sits at Kent's northern edge, described by the city as its northernmost park along the trail, with covered picnic seating and quiet river views. It's genuinely close to the Tukwila line, but it's a different stretch of river and a different piece of infrastructure than the Fort Dent Levee, which sits up near the trail's opposite end, close to where the route begins at Cecil Moses Park. The confusion is understandable. The geography isn't ambiguous once you know where the actual boundary lines run.
Why the Trail Breaks in Pieces Its Own City Doesn't Control
This is the part worth sitting with if you use the trail regularly. The Green River Trail corridor is managed as a regional asset, but the levee causing this particular closure falls under a separate authority, the King County Flood Control District, which answers to flood risk and infrastructure funding cycles, not recreation schedules. Tukwila owns the ground Fort Dent Park sits on. Kent owns Briscoe Park, Van Doren's Landing, and the southern terminus near Auburn. When a storm damages a levee in one city's jurisdiction, the resulting closure, running just over four months, doesn't ask permission from the neighboring city whose residents also use the trail every day.
That's the mechanism behind a lot of trail confusion in this region, not just here. A single continuous-looking path is actually a patchwork of city parks departments, county flood control districts, and regional trail authorities, each with its own maintenance backlog and its own timeline for fixing it. Kent's stretch has stayed open through this cycle. It won't always be Kent's stretch that gets the reprieve next time something breaks.
Who Actually Has to Detour
The honest answer: not many Kent residents, and only if you fit a specific pattern.
- If you walk or run within Kent city limits, from Briscoe Park south to North Green River Park, nothing about your route has changed.
- If you bike north past Briscoe Park with the intent of continuing all the way through Tukwila toward Seattle, you'll hit the closure at Fort Dent Park and need to either walk your bike through the temporary path or take the Interurban Ave S detour around it.
- If you're a wheelchair user who occasionally extends a ride north of Kent, the temporary path inside Fort Dent Park won't work for you at all. The detour route is the only option until construction wraps.
- If your trail use is entirely local, this closure is background noise, not a routing problem.
Kent's Own Trail Events Never Reach the Closure
Two of Kent's community trail events bracket this closure window, and neither one comes close to Fort Dent Park.
Run The Green, the city's half marathon and 10K, took place March 14, 2026, months before construction began. Both courses started and finished at Three Friends Fishing Hole and ran out and back along the river past a nearby golf course.
The Kent Cornucopia Days 5K followed on Saturday, July 11, 2026, already inside the construction window, and it still never came near the closure. The course also started and finished at Three Friends Fishing Hole, sending runners north through Briscoe Park and briefly across the Tukwila line before turning back. That dip into Tukwila happens right at the Kent border near Briscoe Park, nowhere close to the Fort Dent Levee up at the trail's opposite end. Race organizers didn't need to adjust a thing, because the course was never built to go that far.
If You Want More River Without Leaving Kent's Stretch
For residents looking to make more of the unaffected miles this fall, the Green River Natural Resources Area sits entirely within Kent, off Russell Road and the Puget Power Trail. It's a 304-acre site built on what used to be an abandoned sewage lagoon system, now functioning as flood storage and wildlife habitat with three viewing towers and 1.4 miles of gravel trail. The city's own materials put the bird count at more than 100 species observed from the towers. A separate hiking guide describing the same preserve puts the estimate as high as 165 bird species and 53 mammal species. The two numbers don't match exactly, which happens when different sources count the same wetland at different times, but either figure points to the same thing: a genuinely underused stretch of Kent's own trail system that has nothing to do with what's happening up in Tukwila.
What This Means Through the End of October
If your trail use stays inside Kent, plan around nothing new. If you're the kind of rider who treats the Green River Trail as a through-route into Tukwila or Seattle, build the Interurban Ave S detour into your route now, and don't count on the temporary Fort Dent path if you're on wheels that can't be walked through construction zones. Either way, the reroute belongs to Fort Dent Park, not to Briscoe Park, Van Doren's Landing, Three Friends Fishing Hole, or anywhere south of the Kent line. Construction is scheduled to wrap October 31, 2026, and the trail's Kent stretch will have run the whole span without a single detour sign of its own.
Understanding how a place actually works, down to which agency owns which stretch of trail, is the same instinct that matters when you're deciding where to live in Greater Seattle. If you're weighing a move to Kent or anywhere else in Greater Seattle and want someone who tracks this level of local detail on the real estate side too, Kapil Gangane is happy to talk through what's ahead. Let's Connect.
