"Love living near this park." That's the whole opening line of one neighbor's review of Sunnyside Park, and it undersells the place by a mile. The same review goes on to mention ponds, a disc golf course, a farm next door with sheep and a llama, and fireworks every Fourth of July. Four words at the top, then a list that reads like a park most of Pullman has never actually seen.
That's the part worth sitting with. Sunnyside Park does not show up on the lists that get built for people visiting Pullman. The attractions that make those roundups tend to cluster downtown and around campus: the WSU Arboretum, the Bill Chipman Trail, Reaney Park where the National Lentil Festival sets up every summer. Sunnyside sits on the opposite edge of town, off Old Wawawai Road, reachable mainly by driving through the same residential streets that make up Golden Hills West. Nobody passes it on the way to anywhere else. You either live near it or you don't know it's there.
Golden Hills West does.
A Corridor, Not a Coincidence
Walk to the end of nearly any street in the subdivision and you land on Old Wawawai Road within a few blocks. Follow that road a short distance and you reach Marcia Drive, the same intersection where the entrance to Sunnyside's disc golf course sits. When Pullman police closed a stretch of Wawawai Road for an active incident a few years back, the closure they described ran "between Golden Hills Drive and Marcia Drive," which tells you how tightly this corridor is wound together. The park isn't a drive. It's a continuation of the neighborhood's own street grid.
That geography is the reason the park's amenity list matters here in a way it wouldn't for someone crossing town to use it. Twenty-five acres, free to use, sitting at the edge of streets you already know the names of.
What's Actually There, Free
The city's own facilities page describes Sunnyside as a park that rolls with the natural terrain of the Palouse, and the amenity list backs that up:
- An 18-hole, par-3 disc golf course, free to play, with enough elevation change and wind exposure that regulars rate it a tougher round than its "municipal course" reputation suggests. A typical round covers about 1.6 miles and takes close to an hour.
- Six dedicated outdoor pickleball courts with permanent lines and nets, plus two tennis courts, all free and open to the public. Restrooms and drinking water are on site.
- Twin ponds fed by a small waterfall and connected by a creek, with willows dipping into the water and a resident population of ducks and turtles.
- A Little League baseball field and a playground the city replaced with new equipment in 2023.
None of that requires a membership, a reservation, or a drive across Pullman. It requires walking to the end of the block.
The Garden Plot Rule Nobody Explains Until You're Standing There
The south side of the park, once a nursery, now holds 24 rentable garden plots, and the mechanics of renting one are specific enough that they're worth knowing before you show up expecting a normal community garden setup.
The fee is $30 per plot for the season, and that single payment covers spring and fall rototilling, initial weed control, and shared water access for the plots. The soil is black loam on a gentle north slope with no shade obstruction, which is part of why the city describes the growing conditions as favorable. The season runs from roughly April 15 through October 15, weather depending, which means as of this week there are still about five weeks of growing season left before the plots close for winter.
Here's the detail that catches first-time renters off guard: vehicles aren't allowed inside the park. Access to the nearest parking is off Wawawai Road, and from there it's about 300 feet on foot to the gardening area. You carry in your own tools and hose. It's a small friction, but it's the kind of thing that separates a resident who's actually used the plots from someone repeating a city brochure.
If you've been meaning to rent one this fall, there's still time. If you're thinking about next spring, now is a reasonable moment to start planning around it, since the city's Parks and Recreation office handles the reservations and can confirm current plot availability.
The Working Farm Over the Fence
Part of what makes Sunnyside feel different from a standard city park is what borders it. The same neighbor review that opened this piece mentions a working farm just past the park fence, with sheep and a llama visible from the walking paths, and a trail that leads to a small, unmarked cemetery tucked into the property. None of that is engineered parkland. It's the kind of edge you get when a 25-acre green space sits at the literal boundary of a town this size, with agricultural land picking up where the mowed grass stops.
That detail doesn't show up in any official amenity list, and it's not the sort of thing a visitor passing through would notice on a first walk. It's the kind of thing you notice because you walk the same loop often enough to recognize the sheep.
The Drive Back to Normal
One more piece of practical news for anyone using this corridor to run errands. The City of Pullman spent most of this past spring and summer resurfacing Bishop Boulevard between South Grand Avenue and Southeast Fairmount Drive, the stretch most Golden Hills West residents use to reach the Safeway near Bishop and Klemgard. Construction started May 18, 2026 and reduced Bishop to one lane in each direction for weeks at a time. By early July, the city confirmed the boulevard was open to through traffic again, with crews only finishing up traffic control removal. If you'd been avoiding that route all summer, it's worth reintroducing it to your errand run now that the detours are gone. The city's traffic control page has the full project history if you want to see what else is scheduled on that corridor going forward.
What This Actually Means
Sunnyside Park isn't going to show up on a list built for tourists, and it doesn't need to. The lists built for tourists are optimized for people who don't already live three blocks from a free disc golf course and six pickleball courts. Golden Hills West doesn't have that problem. The park was never missing from the neighborhood's version of Pullman. It was just missing from everyone else's.
If you're already gardening a plot this fall, walking the loop past the ponds, or planning a pickleball evening before the light changes, you already know all of this. If you're new to the neighborhood and didn't know the corridor connected this cleanly, now you do.
For more on what makes Golden Hills West work day to day, or if you're weighing a move within Pullman and want someone who actually knows these streets, reach out to Pullman Properties. Let's Connect.
