If you've walked the Ebey Waterfront Trail more than a few times, you already know its shape. Park at the boat launch off State Avenue and 1st Street, head out along the slough, watch for eagles and blue herons, turn around at the estuary, drive home. It's a there-and-back walk, and for most of the last decade, that's exactly what it's been designed to be. A gap in the trail near 53rd Avenue NE has kept it that way.
That gap is finally scheduled to close. The city calls it Phase IV-B, and when it's built, the Ebey Waterfront Trail stops being a dead-end nature walk and starts being something closer to an actual route through this part of Marysville, one that already reaches Jennings Park in ways most people who use the trail haven't noticed yet.
The Piece Nobody's Been Able to Walk
Marysville finished the last new stretch of this trail back in 2019, a one-mile segment along Sunnyside Boulevard south of 53rd Avenue NE, paid for partly through state legislative funding secured in 2018. Since then, the trail has stopped there. West of 53rd, and south along 47th Avenue NE, the connection to the First Street Bypass has simply not existed.
According to the city's capital improvement projects page, that's the piece now moving. Phase IV-A of the project is complete. Phase IV-B, budgeted at roughly $2.1 million and partly funded by the Washington State Department of Commerce, is scheduled for construction in the middle of this year. It will finish the remaining 1.28 miles along Sunnyside and 47th, tie into the First Street Bypass, and add a real trailhead parking lot along a newly built dike that went in as part of the Qwuloolt Estuary restoration.
That last detail matters more than it sounds. The trail isn't just getting longer. It's getting a second real access point, which means the current bottleneck at the State Avenue boat launch, the only formal parking most people know about, stops being the only way in.
The Connection to Jennings Park You Probably Didn't Know Was Already Built
Here's the part that changes how you should think about this trail even before Phase IV-B breaks ground: it already connects to Jennings Park.
A separate, already-completed project put in a traffic signal at 61st Street NE and 53rd Avenue NE, along with a multi-use path on 53rd Avenue NE running between 64th Street NE and 61st Street NE. That path was built specifically to link Jennings Park's trail network into the Ebey Waterfront Trail system. It's not a future plan. It's finished infrastructure, sitting there, mostly unused by people who still think of the waterfront trail as an isolated loop.
Jennings Park itself is worth the walk on its own terms. It's the kind of park that does double duty as a neighborhood gathering spot and a genuine green space, with Allen Creek running through it, a kids-only fishing pond stocked with fish, and a Master Gardener's demonstration garden that donates its produce to the local food bank. Adjoining Jennings Nature Park adds more trail mileage through wooded, wetland terrain. None of that shows up if you only ever park at the boat launch and turn around at the estuary.
Dog owners get a version of the same story. Strawberry Fields Off-Leash Dog Park and Doleshel Park, the latter fully fenced with its own small beach area, sit within the same general trail corridor. None of these places were designed as one system originally. They're becoming one anyway, piece by piece, as the city fills in the gaps between them.
What You're Actually Walking Through Right Now
The existing paved section, running roughly two miles one-way from the boat launch to the Qwuloolt Estuary, earns its reputation honestly. It's flat, fully paved, and wide enough that strollers, wheelchairs, and bikes share it without friction. A few things worth knowing if you haven't been out there recently:
- Birders have logged more than 200 species along the corridor, and eagles, ospreys, and blue herons are common enough sightings that regulars stop mentioning them.
- River otters show up often enough to be a real possibility, and harbor seals occasionally work their way up the slough.
- On clear days, the trail lines up views of Mount Rainier, and on the clearest days, the Olympics and Cascades both show up at once.
- Interpretive signage along the route tells the story of the Qwuloolt Estuary itself: dammed for more than a hundred years, then breached in August 2015 in a restoration effort led jointly by the NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center and the Tulalip Tribes. An old shipwreck, uncovered during that restoration, is still on display near the trail.
None of this changes with Phase IV-B. What changes is where you can start and where you can end up.
The Closure Nobody Warned You About
Trails like this don't stay static, and the city has been upfront about at least one recent disruption worth remembering if you plan around this trail regularly. In January 2026, a section adjacent to Marysville's wastewater treatment plant closed for two weeks, from January 12 through January 26, for construction tied to plant efficiency upgrades. Anyone starting from the Ebey Waterfront Park boat launch had to turn back at about a third of a mile. The city's alert notice pointed people instead to the newer Ebey Waterfront Trailhead at 4922 61st Street NE for anyone who wanted the longer walk without the detour.
That trailhead is worth remembering even outside of closures. It's closer to the Jennings Park connection than the State Avenue lot, and it's a useful starting point if Phase IV-B construction ends up affecting access near the boat launch later this year, which is a reasonable thing to expect once work actually begins.
Why This Is Worth Tracking
| Phase | Status |
|---|---|
| Sunnyside Blvd segment, south of 53rd Ave NE | Completed 2019 |
| 53rd Ave NE multi-use path, connecting to Jennings Park | Completed |
| Phase IV-A | Completed |
| Phase IV-B (Sunnyside Blvd west of 53rd, 47th Ave NE, First Street Bypass connection, new trailhead) | Scheduled for construction, mid-2026 |
Put those rows together and the pattern is pretty clear. Marysville hasn't been building one trail. It's been slowly wiring together a network of trails, parks, and dog parks that already exist, closing the literal gaps between them one contract at a time. The Ebey Waterfront Trail was the anchor piece, the destination everyone already knew about, and it's about to stop being the endpoint and start being the middle of something bigger.
If you live anywhere between downtown and Jennings Park, that's a meaningfully different trail than the one you've been walking. It's not a bigger park. It's a shorter walk to more of the city than the map currently shows.
We track this kind of thing at The WC Group because it's the texture of what makes a neighborhood work day to day, long before it ever shows up in a listing description. If you're curious what any of this means for your own corner of Marysville, or you just want to know what your home is worth while the trail work is underway, reach out any time. Get Your Free Home Valuation and let's talk about what's actually happening in your neighborhood.
