It is open space, supplying about 10 percent of the city's park inventory — 25 percent if you include the leased tidelands. Wooded trails, beach, ankle-high grass meadows and vistas of the Olympic Mountains and Puget Sound make it feel like a vacation daydream. Then dodge panting joggers and dogs straining to the edge of leashes and you wake up to realize downtown is only six miles southeast.

It is someone's yard. Americana sits on high ground, in the form of century-old houses with wraparound porches and hanging American flags. They were built as officers' quarters when old growth was cleared to make way for the Fort Lawton Military Reservation. They still house military brass, mostly Navy now. In all, about 90 military families live in three pockets of the park and represent the Army, Air Force and Marines, too.

It is an eclectic neighborhood. The Federal Aviation Administration staffs a tower topped by a white orb so big it looks like a giant's golf ball. Trucks rumble down a restricted two-lane road that pierces the heart of the park and leads to the sewage-treatment plant sprawling along a stretch of beach. North of the plant, on the very tip of the land, sits the Coast Guard's West Point Lighthouse, flashing since 1881. The Daybreak Star Cultural Arts Center, tucked on a northern boundary, is home to Indian cultural celebrations, art exhibits, education programs and expansion dreams.

The park is a laboratory. Researchers record and converse with songbirds to study how they acquire and pass along language. Someone else has tracked hummingbirds. Birders flock there to watch for 250 different species that have been spotted over the years. Teachers regularly use the land to explore plants, critters, geology.

It's a ghost town and history lesson. A few empty buildings and stairways leading nowhere linger from the seven decades the Army occupied the land. More than a million soldiers and thousands of POWs passed through here, and folks still wander back, recalling births and marriages.

Bob Kildall, who helped lead the effort to turn the surplus Army base on Magnolia Bluff into Discovery Park, still strolls the trails and beach. He likens each visit to a weekend rejuvenation - and he doesn't even have to fight freeway traffic on the way home.

It's a prize. Citizens fought to make it a refuge by fending off the Department of Defense and dozens of competing proposals. They are still vigilant. And Discovery Park, which turned 30 this summer, is a work-in-progress, evolving slowly but stubbornly, from cement to trails, buildings to trees.

NATHAN VOIGT walks out the front door of one of the homes on the park's high ground and into the soft light of early morning. The school bus won't be there to pick up the 14-year-old for another hour, but Nathan has his daily chore to complete. Eyes still puffy from sleep, he shuffles along, clutching a folded American flag to his chest as if it were a blanket.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Nathan has raised the flag 60 feet to the top of an old, slightly warped pole that stands 100 yards from his front door. His father, Burk, a lawyer with the Judge Advocate General, borrowed the flag from the adjacent Army Reserve Base, where he works.

Nathan wears his hair military-style short, answers questions with "Yes sir" or "No sir" and says, "It's an honor to those who died in the attacks and the heroes protecting us." The morning ritual has brought some early-rising walkers to tears, and some often stop to talk. Some say they haven't seen a flag flying there for 30 years.

He allows himself a weary smile, as he recounts the winter morning when wind strafed the hillside during a raising and turned the flag into a runaway kite. He and his brother waited two hours, he says, to make sure it didn't touch ground.

As Nathan waits for the bus, his mother, Stephani prepares for a garage sale. The private road isn't on city maps, so visitors are told to look for the FAA's golf-ball tower, which splits the row of seven houses on the hill. Almost all of the residents of the houses (duplexes mostly) are Navy and they include an admiral and the commanding officer of the Everett Naval Base. Most families stay two or three years before shipping out. One wife, Deb Squires, tacks up a sign in each house she moves into that reads, "Home is where the Navy sends you."

	Michelle Sanidad, dressed in traditional dance attire, is the chief financial officer of the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation. The foundation operates the Daybreak Star Cultural Arts Center on 20 leased acres in the park.

Some of the homes exhibit bygone craftsmanship, but the best part is having a park for a yard. Two teenage boys in opposite ends of a duplex rap Morse Code messages on a connecting wall. The wives, who jokingly call themselves, "the Fort Lawton Ladies," have teas, walk the trails, carpool, discuss the news, arrange parties. Without this housing, Stephani says, she and her family of eight couldn't have afforded Magnolia.

FROM THE FLAGPOLE, you get a view not only of the two other military-housing pockets but also of Fort Lawton's roots. Arranged along or near an oval meadow once known as the parade grounds are six of the original 28 Colonial Revival structures that rose in 1898. The Post Exchange/gymnasium, with its portico of stately white pillars, catches your eye first, but the jail has the distinction as the remaining building used the longest for its original purpose. The gray iron doors to the two large cells still open and close without a creak.

In 1894, Washington had been a state five years and needed business. Dreaming it would infuse money into the community, leaders lobbied for an Army post and offered hundreds of acres of "wilderness" not far from downtown. In selling the idea to Congress, Army Brigadier Gen. Elwell Otis said the fort could help keep the peace. Western Washington folks were, he warned, "restless, demonstrative and oftentimes turbulent" and "fancied provocation." It was also sold as a way to protect the naval shipyard in Bremerton, across the Sound.

Soon, barracks and officer homes rose. Within 10 years, a hospital went up. So did a gym, a school, a fire station, horse barracks. Near where the treatment plant is now, there were two swimming holes: one for officers, one for enlisted men. But the bustle that Seattle leaders had envisioned never came. Instead, the base's fortunes rose and fell with the tides of war and peace. In 1938, the Army even tried to give it back, but the city said no because it couldn't afford, especially during the Depression, to keep the place up.

Dr. Phil Vogelzang plucks his dog, Scout, out of the way so he can get back to pulling weeds from a patch of ground he is reforesting. He is one of an eclectic group of volunteers the park depends on to fight off invasive plants, return former military land to nature, and lead tours.

In World War I, the troop population peaked at 428. World War II represented the apex, with about 400 buildings and more than a million soldiers and Italian and German POWs passing through. More barracks went up, and so did a theater, bowling alley and five mess halls.

As the war wound down, an Italian prisoner was lynched during a melee. Lt. Col. Leon Jaworski, later famous for prosecuting President Nixon during Watergate, served as the trial judge advocate in the case. A few soldiers were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to hard labor. A few dozen more were court-martialed.

Amid the Cold War on the mid to late '50s, Fort Lawton became a command and control center for surface-to-air NIKE missiles positioned around the region as the last line of defense against Soviet attack jets. The complex doubled as a nuclear fallout bunker, built to withstand a near-miss.

The bunker, a box with 4-foot-thick walls and a 2-foot-thick roof, is now essentially a heavily fortified closet for the parks department. Near where computers the size of refrigerators once stood, there sits fake coral for the Seattle Aquarium, zoo displays and boxes of city records. Near faded signs that read, "Decontamination System, June 15, 1961" and "Decontaminated Mask Check" are happy festival knickknacks like a sign that boldly advertises, "The Slug and The Lettuce."

BOB KILDALL is white-haired, 82, and diplomatic, believing you get what you give. He advised his Danish wife, whom he met at the Seattle World's Fair, how to get along with natives: Compliment the splendor of Mount Rainier and you can pretty much complain about anything.

He does not seem a fighter, but he fought from the start along with others, more than 30 years ago, to get a nature refuge when the Army announced it no longer needed a base there. He founded "Friends of Discovery Park" and believes the 1972 Discovery Park Master Plan is as much a binding contract as a blueprint. He knows the mission statement by rote: that the incomparable site dictates the use — open space providing "rejuvenation through quiet, solitude and nature." In an ever-crowding city, space has never been more important.

	The officers quarters within Discovery Park sit on the park's high ground.

U.S. District Judge Donald Voorhees, whom Kildall calls "the father of Discovery Park," co-wrote the plan. Voorhees had the vision, but Sen. Henry Jackson had the clout. Federal law required that surplus military land be sold for half its market value, but Seattle had given the land away in the first place, so Jackson pushed through "The Fort Lawton Bill." It mandates that cities, counties and states that gave property to the military get the same deal in return. Not only did it enable Seattle to pursue the park dream, it delivered more than a billion dollars' worth of land to cities and states across the country.

But the Army's retreat of the mid '60s set off a land rush. The Department of Defense wanted to put an updated anti-ballistic-missile base there. Jackson helped stop that. Various groups floated proposals for everything from a golf course to a jail. Citizens rejected them all.

Native Americans, led by Bernie Whitebear, laid claim, too — arguing that the ground belonged to the ancestors of the original inhabitants. Protesters occupied the military reservation to drive home the point. As a compromise, in 1971 the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation settled for a 99-year lease of 20 acres with sweeping views of Shilshole Bay. Whitebear died a few years ago, but longtime assistant and now foundation CEO Michelle Sanidad is leading an effort to add 90,000 square feet of structures there.

Kildall strolls along the beach below Magnolia Bluff, heading north toward the lighthouse at the edge of the spit. To his left, boats cruise and ducks bob in the bay. To his right is a 12-foot gray wall of the treatment plant. The sprawling industrial site can make the beach stinky some days, but Metro has spent several millions trying to camouflage its visual and odorous presence, and is paying the park about $3 million in mitigation money.

"We've got a sewage plant," he says, "but we stopped a missile base and we changed federal law. The golfers wanted 25 acres. Some developer wanted to build up here. There must have been 100 proposals over the years. If half of them had happened we wouldn't have a park. I grew up here and have seen what's been lost and what the difference is when you apply yourself to protect something."

When two military families were transferred from the area, well-wishers hosted a send-off party outside the officers' housing on the park's high ground.
MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND INDUSTRY
Discovery Park began as the Fort Lawton military reservation; what is now a meadow once was parade grounds. In this circa-1914 photo, cavalry troops ride around the grounds.

THE PARK IS QUIET around dinnertime, so Dr. Phil Vogelzang, a neuroradiologist, seems to have it to himself. He had spent his day studying radiology images for evidence of bad news. Now he is on his adopted patch of ground, performing the optimistic work of planting trees, pulling weeds, spreading wood chips.

A cool wind envelops him as he empties one last load of chips into a wheelbarrow. He takes a break, reclining against a supply mound. He's 44, a lean 6 foot 6, and wears his sandy hair in a casual mop. His thick-framed glasses are the kind you often see in laboratories and libraries. He went to high school in Bellevue, medical school at the University of Washington and did his residency in Boston before winding up back in Seattle.

Before him lay a U-shaped trail that only last fall was cement road left from the days when hospital buildings were there. He has strewn saplings and starter fuel like decomposing Christmas trees and logs to turn it all back to forest.

"I love this park, and manual labor like this relaxes me," he says. "What I love best is doing something that isn't for profit or with some ulterior motive." Still, he approaches the task with A-type behavior, enlisting the help of a Boy Scout troop, seeking advice from a hydrologist friend, Moss Stone, and approaching various sources for spare trees and plants. When someone in his neighborhood appears ready to cut a tree he asks, "Can I have that?"

Vogelzang may be the most driven, but he's just one of an eclectic group of volunteer stewards who build trails, pull weeds, give nature talks. They include a baker, car salesman, orthopedic surgeon, jail pastor, executives and retirees, professors, bike messengers, bankers and a handyman, a bookstore owner, a nurse and a real-estate agent. Clubs, schools and companies volunteer, too.

Vogelzang started coming to the park to train for cycling races, but eventually started attending park advisory board meetings. Now he is a member of it and involved in all kinds of issues, including the reforesting project being done by landscape architect Charles Anderson on about eight acres of what until recently was packed with old Army Reserve buildings.

From the high ground of his worksite, he can look down over the Capehart housing complex, which consists of cheap, single-story duplexes built in the '60s and home to about 65 enlisted men and women. Huge signs warn that it is off-limits to all but military. It swallows about 25 acres near the center of the park and seems out-of-context, even in such an eclectic park. The city has long wanted the military to cede the land, and Vogelzang has been leading a recent effort to gently nudge it. The Navy simply says it needs the housing.

View a larger version of both maps.

MANY OF THE TREES and plants on Dr. Vogelzang's adopted patch were put there by an unassuming plant expert named Dee Perguson. He is 80 years old, speaks just above a whisper, and downplays his role to the point of being a shrinking violet. Others aren't so shy about his work.

"Basically, he's the Johnny Appleseed of Discovery Park," says Penny Rose, a naturalist who coordinates volunteer stewards and environmental-education instructors there. "He has propagated and planted virtually every plant along the Wolf Tree Trail and other parts of the park. In addition to planting, he has cared for that area for over 20 years, maintaining the delicate balance and waging the continual war against invasive species such as ivy and blackberry."

Giving a tour of the trail, Perguson makes no mention of his effort. As he walks, he looks up into the forest canopy and down into plant leaves more than on the path ahead. Occasionally he pulls a tiny magnifying glass from his pocket to examine a new bud or bloom. He not only knows the scientific names of all the plants, but also the practical names that give better clues to their uses or distinctions.

"I tell kids it's important to know the names," he says. "Think of all the people you see walking around each day. But when you see someone whose name you know, suddenly it means something. They're special."

The land where the Wolf Tree Trail sits is an example of how Discovery Park has evolved. Native Americans foraged here, using plants and trees for food, medicine and supplies, such as canoes. In the late 1880s it became a working farm, which, Perguson says, probably accounts for the spectacular red alder the trail is named for. Wolves hunt in wide territories, and the Wolf Tree has spread its branches so widely that it was probably once alone or nearly so, in an open field. It had no competition for sunlight, unlike the alders now, which need to reach high above the dense forest to get light.

Eventually the farm was replaced by Army barracks. When the buildings were removed, an army of invasive plants moved in. Perguson and others have toiled to maintain the trail as a classroom, an urban connection to the natural world.

No dogs, even on leashes, or joggers are allowed on the trail. Yet in the span of 10 minutes, down walked a guy and his dog. Then came a woman jogger. When Rose politely reminded each of the rules she was treated as if she had just cut them off in traffic.

The West Point Lighthouse has been in operation since 1881.

IN FACT, YOU NEVER know who you will meet or what feature of the elephant you will happen upon around the next bend or up the next trail. One morning, I saw a little girl marvel at the mysterious rabbit patch in one end of a meadow. On another, I saw a young woman let her huge dog chase the panicked bunnies in and out of the briers. Some people who wander the trails have been born in the fort hospital or married at one of its chapels. Others came with tales: of tunnels, a runaway cougar, and one from a self-professed "environmentalist" who built his own treehouse (without nails) to smoke pot and commune with nature.

I stumbled onto ash piles behind curtains of trees, where homeless folks are suspected of sometimes bedding down. Once, it seemed I was alone in the park, but soon I became attuned to the sounds of an unlikely trio: tweeting birds, a rapping woodpecker and the grumbling of heavy equipment transforming old Army land to forest. Down a tree-shrouded trail I came to three iron insects someone had arrayed around an old alder as if they were gifts at an altar; I learned that a Stephen King production used a similar tree and spot within the park as a creepy backdrop.

I followed a groundskeeper, Neal Komedal, on one of his early-morning garbage runs. A lanky 52, Komedal is a student of natural sciences, dedicated birder and lifelong outdoor worker. He routinely finds all kinds of social artifacts and evidence from the night before, from the drywall someone has been dumping to the bottles left at favorite drinking spots.

He's also an opera singer and a borderline eccentric who invented what he calls "the outpack," a large plastic garbage can tied to a backpack frame. After lancing litter on a secluded stretch of beach, he hiked up a hill, through the woods. He whacked encroaching limbs, dunking each over a shoulder and into his outpack without breaking stride.

Now, where else in Seattle, I thought as I followed, would you see such a sight?