For as long as WABI Burien has been leading its monthly Walk-n-Talk down the Indian Trail, the route has ended the same way. You climb down from Gregory Heights, cross Three Tree Point, follow the trail north where it runs parallel to Maplewild Ave SW, reach the 16000 block, and turn around. There has never been anywhere to sit. No bench, no shop, no reason to linger before the 300 feet of elevation you gave up on the way down reappear under your shoes on the way back up.
That changed this year. The organization's own June 2026 write-up of the walk adds a line that has never appeared in any earlier version of the same announcement, going back to at least 2012: before heading back up the hill, walkers may want to stop at the new coffee shop at Three Tree Point for refreshments. One sentence, but it marks the first time in the trail's documented history that the turnaround point offers something other than a view.
Two Trails, One Name, and Only Half of It Faces the Water You'd Expect
Locally the whole route goes by "the Indian Trail," but it's really two trails stitched together, and the names tell you which direction to look. The southern leg winds high above the shoreline strip of SW 172nd Street and is known as the Sunrise Trail. From Three Tree Point northward, the path runs parallel to Maplewild Ave SW and picks up the name Sunset Trail, because standing on it in the evening you look northwest toward Seahurst Beach and Shorewood, with West Seattle beyond that.
| Sunrise Trail | Sunset Trail | |
|---|---|---|
| Runs along | SW 172nd Street | Maplewild Ave SW |
| Direction of view | East-facing morning light | Northwest toward Seahurst and Shorewood |
| Connects to | Gregory Heights (start) | The 16000 block of Maplewild (turnaround) |
An account from Burien resident Charley Ganong, published in Highline Heritage, places the origins of the corridor well before either name existed. The trail is understood locally as a remnant of a route used by Duwamish and Muckleshoot people traveling the length of Puget Sound, with Three Tree Point serving as a natural stopping point for canoe travel thanks to its freshwater springs and central location on the Sound. Whatever your reason for walking it today, you're walking a path that predates every house along it by a wide margin.
A Walk That Hasn't Changed Its Route Since at Least 2012
WABI Burien's public archive of these walks stretches back well over a decade, and the route description has stayed almost identical the entire time. Walkers meet at the corner of SW 167th Place and 31st Ave SW in Gregory Heights, not at Burien Town Square, a distinction the organizers repeat in nearly every announcement because people keep showing up at the wrong spot. From there the group descends the Sunrise leg, passes a point with a 180 degree view that takes in Normandy Park, Des Moines, Redondo, Mount Rainier, Tacoma, and the islands of the Sound, then climbs back up a portion of the Sunset Trail to the 16000 block of Maplewild before retracing the entire loop uphill to the start.
The math has been consistent for years: about three miles round trip, roughly 300 feet of elevation change, and two to three hours depending on how many rest breaks the group takes. Three public beach access points sit along the way, though the beach itself below the high tide line in front of private homes is not public property, and WABI's own trail notes ask walkers to keep moving if they step down onto sand. Dogs are welcome. Strollers are not recommended, and the organizers are direct about the terrain being rugged and irregular in stretches, paved in others, a poor fit for anyone with mobility limitations.
Parking is its own small ritual. Street parking exists near the Gregory Heights starting point, but along Maplewild and at Three Tree Point itself it's genuinely hard to find, which is why the group's standing advice is to carpool with a friend, park one car at the far end, and shuttle back for the other.
What Waited at the Bottom of the Hill, Until February
The building at 16957 Maplewild Ave SW has occupied that spot since 1903, when it opened as the very first grocery store in Burien. Over the following century it cycled through uses that read like a list of everything a small building on a beach road can become: a butcher shop, a mechanics garage, a library, a coffee shop, a dive shop, and at one stretch simply a private home.
On February 23, 2026, it became a coffee shop again, this time as the third café from QED Coffee, a small-batch Seattle roaster founded in 2015 by Matt Greenfield, joining the company's existing locations in Mount Baker and West Seattle. Greenfield told The B-Town Blog that conversations about leasing the historic space began in September 2025 and a lease was signed by November. The café opened with modest hours, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., serving coffee, pastries, and breakfast sandwiches, with wine, beer, and longer hours planned once the operation settles in.
"I really see this place as an all day meeting place, a little something for everyone."
That's how Greenfield described his intent for the space, and the renovation backs it up. The team kept much of the building's original character while adding new butcher block counters, a redesigned front bar, and an extra room with window seats, changes aimed at making the space work for both a five-minute coffee stop and a longer stay.
Why the Loop Finally Closes
Here's the part that matters if you've walked this trail before: for over a decade, the Sunset Trail's entire function was scenery and exercise. You went down, you looked at the water, you turned around because there was nothing else to do. That's not a complaint about the trail itself, which has always had the view and the history going for it. It's a structural gap that every WABI announcement from 2012 through 2025 shares in common. Read them back to back and the route never varies, but the destination is always just a turnaround point.
The 2026 announcement is the first one where that's no longer true. WABI didn't add a new leg to the trail or change the mileage. They added a sentence recommending a stop at an actual place that didn't exist in any of the previous fifteen-plus years of the same walk. A century-old storefront that had been a grocery store, then a garage, then a library, then empty, is now the first fixed point on this route that gives people a reason to arrive rather than just a reason to turn back.
How to Walk It Yourself
- Park in Gregory Heights near SW 167th Place and 31st Ave SW, since street parking along Maplewild and at Three Tree Point is limited.
- Follow the Sunrise Trail south along the SW 172nd Street shoreline strip, watching for the point with the 180 degree view toward Normandy Park, Des Moines, and Mount Rainier.
- Continue onto the Sunset Trail as it turns north and parallels Maplewild Ave SW.
- Stop at QED Coffee inside the Three Tree Point Store at 16957 Maplewild Ave SW, open daily from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., before starting the climb back.
- Retrace the route uphill to Gregory Heights, budgeting two to three hours total for the roughly three-mile loop.
If you'd rather walk it with company, WABI Burien holds its Walk-n-Talk on this route on a recurring monthly basis and posts the exact date and meeting time on its site ahead of each one.
None of this changes what the trail has always been: a quiet stretch of shoreline path that's older than the neighborhood built around it. What's changed is that the walk finally ends somewhere worth sitting down, and that's the kind of small, specific shift that only shows up if you're paying attention to the same three miles year after year.
If you're weighing what it actually means to spend your mornings on this stretch of Maplewild Ave, or you're curious what a home along this corridor is worth given how the neighborhood is evolving, Porter Group knows this stretch of shoreline block by block. Contact us anytime to talk through it.
