When Donna Powell walks through the front gates at Northwest Trek Wildlife Park in Eatonville, Pierce County, she’s greeted with a stream of golden sunlight and the sounds of eagles chattering, water flowing and leaves rustling from animals in the wetlands.
Powell, who’s worked at Northwest Trek for 49 years, has seen visitors of all ages come and go. She joined the park at age 20 as a part-time admissions cashier, selling tickets to guests from a window. Now the park’s business manager, Powell said her time at Northwest Trek has “become part of who I am,” and she can’t wrap her head around retiring.
“I'll be talking to someone and they'll tell me, ‘Oh my gosh, I was there when I was in grade school, and it was the best experience,’” Powell said. “And I … think, ‘Oh, my God, I probably sold you a ticket, because now you've come in with not only your kids, but your grandkids.’”
Indeed, Northwest Trek, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in July, has attracted generations of families who come to learn more about, and get close to, the more than 40 Northwest animal species — trumpeter swan, Roosevelt elk, black-tailed deer and more — that live there. Spanning 725 acres, the park is a facility under Parks Tacoma but operates independently.
Northwest Trek offers ways for visitors to engage with wildlife that are different from a typical zoo: With an admission ticket, on the Discovery Tram Tour, visitors can ride a tram allowing them to view bison, moose and other animals in a 435-acre free-roaming area with hills, a meadow and lake. They can access facilities such as the nature-inspired Kids’ Trek playground and the Cheney Discovery Center, which includes hands-on learning activities about reptiles and amphibians. On the walking paths, visitors can stroll through a forest and gaze at barn owls and red foxes.
Northwest Trek emphasizes conserving native species, providing a home for wildlife, especially during a time when some species are being hit by habitat loss and stressed by climate change. Most recently, the park welcomed two orphaned cougar cubs named Sullivan and Sienna, who’ve received medical treatment for malnourishment and dehydration, said Rick Dietz, the deputy director at Northwest Trek.
Dietz, who leads the day-to-day operations of the park, said Northwest Trek also allows visitors to reconnect with the environment amid their busy schedules.
“Coming out to Trek helps people slow down and embrace and enjoy nature,” Dietz said. “Simply driving down the one-mile road to get to the park immediately helps you decompress.”
“A refuge for Northwest animals”
In 1971, David “Doc” Hellyer and Connie Hellyer, his wife, donated to Parks Tacoma the land that would become Northwest Trek. Educating children and their families was always on their minds, said Connie Anne Hellyer, one of their three daughters. Her father worked as a pediatrician and clinical professor in Tacoma. Her mother, a former Girl Scout leader, taught piano in settlement houses and started a youth musical radio program.
Many years after the Hellyers first bought the land in the 1930s, they envisioned creating a wildlife park that was accessible to the public.
“They started dreaming about how they could share the land with others and (have it) be a refuge for Northwest animals, but also with the teaching and learning experience for people,” their daughter said.
It was uncommon to see a park like Northwest Trek in 1975, when it first opened, Dietz said. While many zoos at the time displayed animals in concrete and steel bar enclosures, the park managed animals in large, free-ranging areas where visitors could see them closer up.
In Keeper Chats, guests can bring their questions to keepers caring for the animals. Staff members also accompany visitors in activities such as the Tram Discovery Tour. For add-on experiences in the free-roaming area, visitors can ride with a keeper in a modified Jeep through the Keeper Adventure Tour. The Wild Drive tour allows guests to drive their personal vehicles through the free-roaming area, with one staff car leading and another following the visitor’s vehicle. Staff are trained to quickly respond to extremely rare emergencies like animal escapes or injuries, and no animals have hurt guests over the years, according to Tessa Miller, communications and media relations supervisor at Northwest Trek.
Since 1985, Northwest Trek has been continuously accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, a nonprofit organization that evaluates institutions holistically through an independent team of experts in operations, animal management and veterinary medicine.
“It tells the people that this is a facility that is operating at the highest level of any zoological facility in the world,” said Dan Ashe, president and CEO of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, of Northwest Trek’s accreditation. “They can be confident that the animals they're seeing are getting the very best of care, that they're thriving, that they're lawfully obtained.”
In the 2022 accreditation report for Northwest Trek, a group of inspectors with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums noted that the park’s educational programs were “cutting edge,” including efforts to partner with two underserved elementary schools in Tacoma. The park was also praised for its conservation initiatives, such as reintroducing hundreds of endangered northern leopard frogs into the wild and researching white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease killing bat populations.
Northwest Trek has long earned the support of Pierce County residents, who have approved several park bonds to improve its infrastructure, exhibits and animal care spaces. In 2000, residents voted to pass a countywide sales tax measure, which provides for more than 40% of the park’s budget.
Like many organizations reliant on visitors, Northwest Trek took a hit during the pandemic, with attendance dropping from 215,000 per year before 2020 to an average of 141,000 annually from 2021 to 2024. At the same time, the park paused tram operations — during which it replaced old propane trams with electric ones; that also lowered attendance, Powell said.
The park was able to partially offset financial challenges by creating experiences like the Wild Drive tour, which was launched in 2020 to allow guests to explore the free-roaming area while maintaining distance from one another, Powell said. And more visitors are returning, with attendance this year projected to surpass 180,000, up from 148,000 last year.
“We haven't had any staff losses or anything like that,” Powell said. “So from my perspective, I feel like we're really stable.”
These days, the park — which employs about 40 to 100 people depending on the season, and runs on an operating budget of some $8.6 million this year — is contending with rising costs for staffing and animal care. To keep up, the park increased its admission prices by $1 last year; infants still get in for free, but nonmember prices range from $19 for children to $28 for adults when purchased at the front gate ($2 to $3 discounts are available when buying tickets online; members get free admission). Meanwhile, tickets for premium experiences like the Keeper Adventure Tour and Wild Drive tour rose from $95 to $115 for nonmembers over the past five years, according to Powell; prices for members increased to $60.
“There’s something for everybody”
Once a week, Tammy Mitts travels an hour from Maple Valley to volunteer with the education and engagement team at Northwest Trek. Some days, she’ll talk about the bald eagles at the park’s Eagle Passage exhibit, showing visitors a cart with artifacts, talons and a replica of an egg. Other days, she’ll give fun facts about the grizzly bears.
“Being an official volunteer, I can have more of an impact, I think, than just as a random guest walking around,” said Mitts, who began volunteering in November.
When Mitts visited Northwest Trek for the first time more than 30 years ago, she loved seeing the mountain goats and bison in the free-roaming area. She also recalled camping and having picnics around the park with her family through the years. Mitts said the park’s “focus on Northwest animals unique to our area” led her to be a member for over two decades.
What keeps her coming back to Northwest Trek, she said, is that there’s always something new to see, from animals hiding away in the winter to their waking up in the warm summer. Mitts has taken her nephews and their children to the park.
“From very small kids to older people, there's something for everybody,” Mitts said.
For Powell, being part of visitors’ fond memories in some small way, even if they have no recollection of her specifically, makes her feel proud. When she hears guests talk about the park even years later, “you can tell how much they loved coming here and how it stuck with them their whole life,” she said.
“We were doing our job because they didn't remember the gal at the ticket window selling them a ticket,” Powell said. “They remembered what they saw once they walked through the gate.”
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that the correct name for Eagle Pass is Eagle Passage. The story has also been updated to reflect that the Hellyers' vision for creating a wildlife park came many years after they first bought the land.
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