Walk the paved path along East Lake Sammamish Parkway near Louis Thompson Road NE this month and you will hit a barricade instead of lake view. A short stretch of the East Lake Sammamish Trail, the route Sammamish residents have used for two decades to get from a driveway to a shoreline without touching a car, has been closed since June 1 and stays that way through the end of 2026. King County Parks says the closure covers roughly 600 feet of trail between Louis Thompson Road NE and NE Inglewood Hill Road, torn up so crews can replace aging culverts on George Davis Creek.
Six hundred feet sounds small against an 11-mile trail. It is not small if your regular loop happens to cross it. For the rest of this year, the trail that took nearly two decades to finish is, functionally, two trails again.
How the Trail Got Whole in the First Place
The East Lake Sammamish Trail runs along a rail corridor King County bought in 1998, after Burlington Northern Santa Fe stopped running trains on it. An interim crushed-limestone path opened in 2006. Full paving came in stages after that: Redmond's section finished in 2011, Issaquah's in 2013, and Sammamish's own segments were completed in waves in 2015, 2018, and finally 2023, when the last unpaved stretch through the city was upgraded to the same 12-foot paved surface with gravel shoulders as the rest of the route.
That 2023 finish is what made the trail feel complete for the first time. Anyone who bikes it now connects, without interruption, from the Issaquah-Preston Trail in the south all the way north to the Marymoor Connector, which feeds into the Redmond Central Connector and, since May, a Sound Transit light rail station in Marymoor Village. It took 17 years to close every gap. This closure reopens one, right in the middle.
What Still Connects and What Doesn't
The city and King County have been careful to say the parkway itself is not fully shutting down. Crews are closing one lane at a time and directing traffic around the work zone rather than blocking the road outright. That distinction matters for drivers. It matters less for anyone on foot or a bike, because there is no official marked detour for trail users, a point Seattle Bike Blog flagged directly when the closure was first announced in April. The only stated workaround is East Lake Sammamish Parkway itself, which has bike lanes and sidewalks along parts of its length but not the same separated, waterfront experience the trail offers.
Here's roughly how the disruption sorts out depending on where a resident's regular route sits relative to the closure:
| Where you usually walk or ride | What's changed this fall |
|---|---|
| North of the closure, toward Sammamish Landing and the Marymoor Connector | Largely unaffected. This stretch still runs clean through to the Redmond light rail connection. |
| South of the closure, toward the Issaquah-Preston Trail | Also intact on its own. The southern leg functions as its own out-and-back through the rest of 2026. |
| Any route that crosses Louis Thompson Road NE or NE Inglewood Hill Road | Broken. The only way through is the parkway shoulder, on foot or bike, with active construction traffic nearby. |
If your loop lives entirely on one side, you may not notice much beyond a barricade in your peripheral vision. If it doesn't, the trail that finally connected Redmond to Issaquah without a single gap is, for the next several months, back to being two separate trails again.
Why Sammamish Landing Is Doing More Work Than Usual
The stretch north of the closure has one clear anchor: Sammamish Landing, a public park and swimming dock roughly nine miles up from the trail's southern terminus. It has always been a rest stop along the route. This fall it's closer to an endpoint for anyone whose usual loop got cut short, a place to turn around rather than pass through.
Beaver Lake Park is picking up some of that same role for people who've simply shifted their routine off the trail entirely. The park has been running weekend paddle fitness sessions on Beaver Lake through September, including a PaddleFlow class on September 12 and a PaddleFit session the following morning, giving people a reason to treat the lake itself as the destination rather than a waypoint on a longer ride. Pine Lake Park, home to the city's Thursday evening concert series earlier in the summer, is another option that doesn't depend on the closed segment at all.
None of this replaces an 11-mile connected trail. It does mean the closure hasn't left residents without a place to go. It's just relocated where people are choosing to go.
The Market's Last Wednesday Lands the Same Month
The Sammamish Farmers Market has been running every Wednesday at Sammamish Commons this season; the Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon cutting on May 6 for its 19th season. This year's market grew to more than 60 vendors backed by two dozen sponsors, a size the market has built up steadily since it started in 2008. Hours have already shifted once this month, moving from the summer's 4 to 8 p.m. window down to 4 to 7 p.m. on September 2 and September 9 as sunset creeps earlier. Based on the season dates the market has published, the last Wednesday on the 2026 calendar lands September 16.
That means September is the month the trail closure enters its fourth month, and the market that's anchored Wednesday evenings at the Commons since spring has just closed out its season too. Two different clocks, both ticking toward the same stretch of fall. If you treated a Wednesday bike ride down to the market as one trip, September 16 was the last chance to do it that way in 2026.
What This Adds Up To
None of these are separate stories. A trail that took 17 years to finish just lost a piece of itself for the rest of the year, with no marked way around the gap. A market that's run every Wednesday since May has just held its last Wednesday of the season. The parks that don't depend on either of those things, Beaver Lake, Pine Lake, Sammamish Landing, are where the fall routine is actually landing for a lot of people right now.
If you live north of Louis Thompson Road, your usual ride probably still works. If you live south of it, same story on your side. If your loop used to cross that line, you're either detouring onto the parkway shoulder or picking a new anchor point until the culvert work wraps sometime after the new year. Worth knowing before you plan a Saturday around a route that isn't there anymore.
Chris Watkins has spent years tracking exactly this kind of on-the-ground detail across Redmond, Sammamish, Issaquah, and the rest of the Eastside, the small changes that don't show up on a map until you're standing at the barricade. If you're curious what else is shifting in your specific corner of the Plateau, or you just want a local read on how a neighborhood like this one actually functions day to day, Chris Watkins is worth a conversation.
