On select nights this October, the forest paths at Northwest Trek Wildlife Park will glow with spooky lights, and the animals will be wide awake. Hoot 'n' Howl, the park's annual Halloween event, runs October 17-18 and October 24-25 at 11610 Trek Dr E in Eatonville, turning the 723-acre wildlife park into a twilight trick-or-treat destination where the candy stations sit alongside enclosures holding wolves, beavers and barn owls.
The premise is simple and a little unusual. Put on a costume, arrive around dusk, and walk the park's animal paths after dark, when the nocturnal residents are just getting going. Seven trick-or-treat stations are tucked along the route. In the picnic pavilion, families play games and win prizes: skeeball, plinko, and bag tosses. In the Kids' Trek play area, lit up specially for the event, kids can climb like a spider, swoop like a bat and make their own creature. Keeper chats run through the evening, giving visitors a chance to meet the animals that come alive after sunset and hear from the people who care for them.
That mix of nature and Halloween is the point. Northwest Trek is not a haunted house, and it does not try to be. It is a wildlife park that happens to be at its most interesting after dark, and Hoot 'n' Howl is built around that fact rather than around jump scares.
The park itself has a story that stretches back more than half a century. Northwest Trek began with a gift of nearly 600 acres from Dr. David and Connie Hellyer to Metro Parks Tacoma in 1971. The park opened to the public on July 17, 1975, with an innovative tram tour through a free-roaming area where North American wildlife lived together in a landscape that looked like the Northwest rather than a series of cages. The free-roaming area was part of the original $2.6 million development, funded by a public bond issue that Metro Parks Tacoma voters passed in 1973.
That founding idea, native animals in native habitat, still shapes everything at the park. Today Northwest Trek covers 723 acres, with a 435-acre free-roaming area home to bison, Roosevelt elk, mountain goats, caribou, deer and swans, plus more than 200 animals across roughly 38 species, including black and grizzly bears, grey wolves, bald eagles, cougars, wolverines and bobcats. Visitors can ride the tram, drive their own vehicles through on a Wild Drive tour, or go off-road with a keeper on a Keeper Adventure Tour. The park is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and is the companion park to Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma, both operated by Metro Parks Tacoma.
The park has grown carefully over the decades. In 2005, the same year it welcomed its four millionth visitor and celebrated its 30th birthday, Northwest Trek acquired a 100-acre tract immediately north of the free-roaming exhibit area. The land had been platted for residential development, and houses built there would have been visible from the signature tram tour. It was the largest single addition to the park since the original Hellyer gift. Attendance had reached three million visitors in 1999, and the park set a record of 210,000 visitors in 1994.
Hoot 'n' Howl fits into a broader fall season at the park. Each weekend in October, Northwest Trek decorates with eerie spider webs, glow-in-the-dark eyes and pumpkins, and guests are encouraged to wear costumes any weekend of the month. A Haunted Hike scavenger hunt runs during daytime hours, and at the end of the month the park holds Pumpkin Chomp & Stomp, when animals get pumpkins of their own to chomp, stomp and roll. The Halloween programming is a natural extension of what the park already does: get people outside, looking closely at animals, at a time of day when most visitors have gone home.
For families weighing Halloween options, Hoot 'n' Howl occupies a particular niche. It is general admission rather than a seated, ticketed show, and it is aimed at younger children and their adults. The park asks that grown-ups leave scary masks and face paint at home. The result is an evening that leans on atmosphere, animals and candy rather than fright.
Tickets and specific nightly hours are available through Northwest Trek. Because the event runs on select nights across two weeks, families planning to attend should check the park's schedule and purchase admission in advance.