If you drove out Highway 291 toward Nine Mile Falls on a Saturday morning this September, you'd have found the day-use area open, the boat launch busy, and a handful of trucks with empty trailers parked at Deep Creek Trailhead. Ask around online, though, and you'd still have heard people say the whole park is closed. Neither picture is wrong. They're just describing different halves of the same 9,000-plus-acre park, and the gap between them is the actual story.
Riverside State Park did not close and reopen once this year. It closed in pieces, and it has been reopening in pieces ever since, on a schedule that has almost nothing to do with how many weeks have passed and almost everything to do with where the fire actually burned and where the ground underneath the trails is still unstable.
What burned, and where
On August 1, 2026, two fires, the Old Trails Fire and the Autumn Lane Fire, moved into the park during what became the broader Spokane Complex Fires, prompting Level 3 evacuations in the surrounding area. The regional toll was severe. By late August, the complex had burned close to 9,932 acres, displaced more than 65,000 people, and destroyed an estimated 833 homes and other structures, with one life lost.
As KXLY reported, damage inside the park itself settled into roughly 1,500 to 1,600 acres depending on the source. The Old Trails Fire hit the north side, destroying a picnic area and damaging several structures. The Autumn Lane Fire did its worst at Nine Mile Recreation Area, where it took out a tool shed and, more consequentially, the pump house that fed the park's water system. The report quoted Rex Schultz, community engagement manager for Washington State Parks: "we lost the pump house that feeds the water system." That single loss is why potable water still isn't available at Nine Mile even in sections that are technically open again.
The park's most photographed feature, the suspension bridge at Bowl and Pitcher, survived without a mark on it.
The reopening has a shape
By mid-August, about 40 percent of the park was back open to the public, but it wasn't a random 40 percent. The areas that reopened first were the ones that took the least direct damage and sit farthest from the unstable slopes along the Little Spokane River: the Highway 291 day-use area, the Highway 291 boat launch, and Deep Creek Trailhead, all on the park's north end.
The south end took longer, not because it burned worse, but because the fix there involved more than clearing debris. Crews spent the closure removing hazard trees and replacing damaged power poles before reopening Bowl and Pitcher, the equestrian campground, and the Centennial Trail segment between TJ Meenach Bridge and Equestrian Lane in the last week of August.
Here's how the park actually breaks down as of late September:
| Area | Status | What it means if you're heading out |
|---|---|---|
| Highway 291 day-use area & boat launch | Open since mid-August | Normal access, no detour |
| Deep Creek Trailhead | Open since mid-August | Hiking access on the north side is back |
| Bowl and Pitcher bridge & equestrian campground | Open since late August | Bridge crossing is fine, but trails west of the bridge are still closed |
| Centennial Trail, TJ Meenach Bridge to Equestrian Lane | Open since late August | This specific stretch reconnected after power pole repairs |
| Little Spokane Natural Area & trails toward Seven Mile Road | Closed, no timeline | Erosion risk along the river corridor, off limits indefinitely |
| Nine Mile Recreation Area water system | Not operational | Bring your own water even where the area is technically open |
The pattern is consistent enough to say out loud: the closer you get to the Little Spokane River corridor, the longer the closure, because that's where root systems that used to hold the slopes together burned away, and where a normal rainstorm now carries real erosion risk. State Parks staff have said as much directly, noting the destabilized ground near the river is more prone to landslides and flash flooding than it was a year ago.
This isn't a two-week detour
The part that catches people off guard isn't that sections are closed. It's how long they're expected to stay that way. As of a mid-September update, park officials said they don't anticipate reopening any more major areas until spring 2027. That's not a placeholder date while paperwork clears. It reflects a real constraint: standing dead and damaged trees can't be fully assessed until they either leaf out or don't next growing season, and erosion mitigation work along the Little Spokane slows to a crawl once winter weather sets in.
Camping reservations at Riverside did reopen as of August 28, so overnight stays are back on the table in the sections that are open. But every park event scheduled for the rest of 2026 has been canceled, and anyone with something planned past September has been told to contact the park office directly rather than assume it's still happening.
Two things worth checking before you go
A couple of details that don't show up in the fire coverage but matter if you're actually planning a fall outing:
- Seven Mile Road is closed between 9 Mile Road (Highway 291) and the 7 Mile bridge for a separate, unrelated sewer installation tied to the Sundance Meadows Development, expected to wrap up in early October. It's easy to assume this closure is fire-related since it sits right next to the park entrance most North Spokane County residents use, but it's a county infrastructure project running on its own timeline.
- A Discover Pass is still required at Riverside's trailheads, same as always. That requirement didn't change with the fire.
What this actually adds up to
If you live in North Spokane County and Riverside has always been the place you default to for a Saturday hike or a slow float on the Little Spokane, the honest way to think about this fall and winter is not "the park is recovering, check back soon." It's closer to "the park now has a smaller working footprint, and the part that's shrunk is the water-adjacent part, for reasons that won't resolve until at least next spring." The north end, the boat launch, the bridge at Bowl and Pitcher, those are back in rotation. The quiet river corridor that a lot of people treated as the park's best-kept feature is the part that's going to stay out of reach the longest.
Plan your fall around what's actually open rather than what you remember being open a year ago, and check the state park's own recovery updates before a longer trip, since the map changes as crews clear more ground.
If you're new to North Spokane County and still learning which trailhead does what, or you've got questions about how a neighborhood here actually lives day to day, Katie McDaris is always glad to talk through it, no obligation attached.
