Talk:List of Washington state parks

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I'm not sure if my little editorial on interesting parks is appropriate here. Feel free to comment or edit.

The Arizona parks system has breakdown of its list by region. We could do the same here. WA Parks & Recreation uses these divisions: Northwest, North Puget Sound, South Puget Sound, Southwest, North Coast, South Coast, North Central, South Central, Northeast, Southeast.

List of parks for completeness

According to GNIS there are 169 parks in Washington state with "state park" in the name, and given the WA state parks website says there's only 120, it seems there's likely about 49 'former' state parks, although there may well be dupes, overlaps, name changes, other 'false positives', etc. I don't want to just dump them into the article as is, unfiltered, so I'll put the list in HTML in this subpage for people to work from. Shawisland (talk) 07:34, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Hanging Gardens State Park

I'm wondering whether this state park may have been renamed to Kanaskat-Palmer State Park. At least there is no Hanging Gardens State Park at the official website. --X-Weinzar (talk) 23:51, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

The Hanging Gardens have been a component of the Green River Gorge master plan since acquisition in the 1940s. In the past they were administered out of Flaming Geyser and are physically located closer to that site downstream. In the 1970s there was an umbrella title, "Green River Gorge Conservation Area," that devoured some of the older names; of late they've been coming back. Source is an old State Parks brochure not available on line. Genehisthome (talk) 06:02, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Parks To Research Further

Columbia Park in Kennewick/Tri-Cities has never been park of the State Parks system. Banks Lake's shoreline (not inclusive of Steamboat Rock) has from time to time been considered State Parks administered, but may have reverted to the Bureau of Reclamation. The Bruceport County Park near Bay Center, Pacific County, may have at one time been the Bay Center State Park. Several of the other San Juan Islands have come and gone from the State Parks system, formerly on Bureau of Land Management withdrawal; some of the ones on the current list are now part of the newly established Federal reserve there. Both the English Camp and American Camp on San Juan Island were State Parks before condemnation by the Federal government for the National Park. A large portion of Sacajawea State Park was lost to impound when the Columbia/Snake River dams were built. Peace Arch was originally named for its donor, Sam Hill. Status of the John R Jackson House and the Rothschild House is undetermined; neither appears on the current State Parks listing. Dry Falls stood for many years as a park independent of Sun Lakes. Source, offline historical documents in my possession; more to come! Genehisthome (talk) 06:16, 15 July 2013 (UTC)