Bainbridge Island's park district has acquired 7.31 acres at the corner of Koura and Miller roads, adding a new trailhead across from Grand Forest North.
The sellers required protective covenants restricting future use to open space for trails and trail-related facilities only, a legal condition that survives even a future change in park board membership or budget priorities and forecloses any later push to develop the parcel for housing or commercial use.
A Bainbridge Island Review retrospective on the island's berry-farming years later described the crop as fruit "fit for kings and queens," a measure of how central the harvest had become to the island's identity before the war interrupted it.
What Remains of the Farm Today The Kouras returned to Bainbridge Island after the war to find their farm intact, left in the care of a trusted friend who had held it for them.
Hamlin's comment about shaping trails "with the community this fall" signals the foundation intends the interpretive and design work, not just the acquisition itself, to be a public process rather than something decided internally and announced only after the fact.
A new 7.31-acre park at Koura and Miller roads preserves the history of the family who ran Bainbridge Island's largest strawberry farm before being forced from their homes in 1942.