Point Defiance Park sits five miles north of downtown Tacoma and encompasses nearly 700 acres at the northern tip of a peninsula jutting into Puget Sound. The park contains one of the few remaining stands of old-growth forest in the urban Puget Sound region — preserved because the land was never logged, having been set aside as a military reservation and later a park.
Five Mile Drive circles the perimeter, passing through old-growth forest, past the Japanese Garden, Fort Nisqually (a reconstructed Hudson's Bay Company trading post), and Owen Beach on the waterfront. Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium, one of the better zoological parks in the Pacific Northwest, is also within the park. The views from the park's bluffs take in the Olympic Peninsula and, on clear days, Mount Rainier rising to the southeast.