"There's just a lot of rebuilding that needs to be done."
That's how a Washington State Parks staffer described the state of Riverside State Park to The Spokesman-Review the same week Bowl and Pitcher reopened. It's a fair summary, and it's also the reason this fall looks different from every other fall a North Spokane resident has spent on these trails. The swinging bridge is back. The park isn't.
If you live anywhere near Five Mile, Indian Trail, or the Wandermere side of North Division, you already know the shorthand: Bowl and Pitcher closed for almost four weeks after wildfire crossed into the park's northwest corner in early August. What you may not know, ten days into the reopening, is which parts of the map actually came back with it and which parts are still waiting on tree crews and dry ground.
What actually reopened on August 28
Park officials reopened the Bowl and Pitcher day-use area and the Equestrian Area on a Friday morning, letting visitors back into both zones after nearly four weeks of closure. That includes the swinging suspension bridge that carries hikers over the Spokane River into the park's main trail network, a structure the Civilian Conservation Corps built in the 1930s and one of the few features in the park that predates the roads leading to it. Campground reservations opened back up online at both sites the same day.
The Centennial Trail also came back, at least in part. The segment between the Equestrian Area and the TJ Meenach Bridge is open again, which restores a meaningful chunk of the paved route that eventually runs 40 miles to Coeur d'Alene, with 13 of those miles inside Riverside State Park itself.
The Spokesman-Review's photographer found both areas quiet that first morning. Three cars in the Bowl and Pitcher day-use lot around 10 a.m. An angler working the river just upstream of the bridge. No crowds, no ribbon-cutting. The kind of reopening that reads as ordinary unless you'd been locked out for a month.
The part of the map that's still closed
Here's where the story stops being simple. Reopening the entrance doesn't mean the park behind it is whole.
- The stretch between the Equestrian Area and Seven Mile Road remains closed, and officials expect that closure to hold for some time because it took the most direct hit from the fire.
- The Little Spokane River Natural Area, home to the Indian Painted Rocks pictograph site and the put-ins used for canoe and kayak trips on the Little Spokane, is also still off limits.
- Trails running from the Equestrian Area into the burn zone are blocked off entirely, not just discouraged.
So if your usual loop starts at the swinging bridge and heads north toward Seven Mile, or if your fall paddling plans included the Little Spokane, the reopening on August 28 doesn't change your plans. It only changes what's available on the near side of the burn scar.
Why "open" doesn't mean "intact"
Even inside the reopened zones, the trail system took damage that a gate sign doesn't capture. Crews cutting fire breaks with bulldozers during the initial response wiped out sections of Trail 25 near the Equestrian Area and part of Trail 210, meaning some of the reopened area still has physical gaps where a firebreak used to be a footpath.
Hazard tree removal is the bigger, slower job. State parks crews have identified roughly 1,000 dead or dying trees along the Centennial Trail corridor and about 300 more along Aubrey White Parkway that need to come down before those stretches are fully safe to use. That work depends on more than staffing. Crews need enough moisture back in the ground before they can start reestablishing damaged trail sections, which means the timeline for full restoration is tied to weather as much as to a work order.
None of this is unique to Riverside State Park in the sense that fire recovery always looks like this. What's specific to this neighborhood is the scale: two zones fully open, one large corridor still closed for the foreseeable future, and a trail count in the hundreds when it comes to trees still standing in the wrong condition along routes people walk their dogs on every week.
What this looks like if you're planning a weekend here
For anyone treating Riverside State Park as their regular loop rather than a once-a-year destination, the practical picture right now breaks down like this:
- The swinging bridge, Bowl and Pitcher day use area, and both campgrounds are open and taking reservations.
- The Equestrian Area is open, but riders should expect reduced mileage since sections of Trail 25 and Trail 210 near that access point are still damaged from firebreak construction.
- The Centennial Trail is rideable and walkable between the Equestrian Area and TJ Meenach Bridge, which covers a real stretch of the paved route, but doesn't extend north past that point yet.
- Anyone whose plans depend on the Little Spokane River Natural Area, including paddlers using the St. George's or Indian Painted Rocks put-ins, needs a different destination this fall.
The park's own history offers a strange kind of context here. The CCC spent three years, from 1933 to 1936, building the bridge, the shelters, and the trail infrastructure that's now being repaired. Riverside State Park has been rebuilt before. It's just never happened on this timeline, with this many trees still standing that shouldn't be, while the rest of the park stays open around the work.
If you're the kind of North Spokane resident who checks trail conditions before checking the news, this is the version worth knowing: the gate is open, the bridge is open, and the map you're used to is smaller than it looks until the tree crews and the rain catch up to each other.
We track these kinds of changes across North Spokane because our clients live here long after closing day, and a neighborhood is more than its median price. If you're weighing a move in this part of the city or thinking about what your own property is worth in a market that's still settling after this summer, The Collection is glad to help you make sense of it. Request a complimentary consultation and home valuation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
