Des Moines, WA — 840 Boat Slips, a Real 1880s Founding Story, and Real Bluff History

What Actually Makes Des Moines Different

Start with the name, because it is the single most common point of confusion a search engine will hand a buyer researching this market. Des Moines, Washington has nothing administratively to do with Des Moines, Iowa -- but the connection is real and documented, not coincidental. Settlers began arriving on this stretch of Puget Sound shoreline in the 1860s (John Moore acquired a 154-acre waterfront claim in 1867), and the town itself was named and founded in 1887 by F.A. Blasher, who persuaded friends back in his former home city of Des Moines, Iowa to help finance the development. In 1889, the area was formally platted into lots and sold by the Des Moines Improvement Company, a firm Blasher had incorporated with Orin Watts Barlow, Charles M. Johnson, and John W. Kleeb. Lumber -- French-Canadian loggers and a substantial sawmill operating at Des Moines Creek through the 1880s -- was the town's original economic engine, not tourism or real estate. The city didn't formally incorporate until 1959, and the reason is a specific, sourced piece of local political history: neighboring Kent had begun annexing surrounding land, and Des Moines residents voted to incorporate as their own city rather than be absorbed into it.

The single fact that most defines Des Moines today is the City of Des Moines Marina -- 840 slips across a 25-acre site, opened in 1970, with a 670-foot public fishing pier added in 1980. This is a genuinely large public marina by Puget Sound standards, though this page is careful not to overstate its ranking: Seattle's Shilshole Bay Marina (roughly 1,400 slips) and the Port of Everett Marina (more than 2,300 slips, described as the largest public marina on the West Coast) are both larger. What makes Des Moines' marina distinctive isn't a size record -- it's that the marina functions as the literal center of the town's identity and economy, not a peripheral amenity. The marina is also, as of this research pass, mid-renovation: a long-planned dock-replacement project is currently rebuilding the L, M, and N piers in phases through early 2026, following an earlier bulkhead-and-breakwater rebuild (engineered by Exeltech) that replaced a failing timber bulkhead and breakwater with new structures. Guest moorage was listed as closed on the marina's own site at the time of this research -- a live operational detail that should be confirmed directly with the marina office (VHF Channel 16, or (206) 824-5700) rather than assumed from an old listing or review.

Directly uphill from the marina, the city broke ground on December 16, 2025 on the Marina Steps project -- a roughly $10 million, 44,856-square-foot public plaza and switchback stairway connecting Overlook I Park at South 223rd Street down a 36-foot elevation change to the waterfront below, with ADA-accessible walkways, seating, a children's play area, and a splash pad, funded roughly 80% by city-issued bonds and 20% by state and grant funding. This is a genuinely current, active infrastructure investment, not a completed amenity yet -- treat any description of the finished Marina Steps as forward-looking until it opens. Also genuinely new: the Kent Des Moines light rail station, part of Sound Transit's Federal Way Link Extension, began carrying passengers on December 6, 2025, after a construction delay from an original 2024 target caused by unstable soil conditions along the route. The station sits near I-5 at the SR 516 interchange, includes a roughly 500-space parking garage, and serves Highline College -- itself physically located in Des Moines at 2400 S 240th Street, not merely named for the broader Highline area. This is a real, current shift in the town's commute math to downtown Seattle that didn't exist a year before this page was researched.

Des Moines' waterfront geography breaks into several named areas worth knowing by name, not just as an undifferentiated 'the waterfront.' Redondo, at the town's southern edge, centers on a 1.1-mile boardwalk, a public fishing pier, and the MaST Center Aquarium -- Highline College's Marine Science and Technology Center, home to more than 250 native Puget Sound species, a 38-foot gray whale skeleton, and a Pacific red octopus touch-tank resident named Hank. The stretch of water just off Redondo Beach is itself a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife-managed marine protected area, an octopus preserve. Woodmont, north of Redondo, is a coastal residential neighborhood adjacent to Saltwater State Park; Zenith holds view and waterfront homes along the bluff. Saltwater State Park itself -- 137 acres with 1,445 feet of Puget Sound shoreline, a 15-site campground, and Washington's only state park with a maintained underwater artificial reef for scuba diving (supporting rockfish and ling cod reported to grow past five feet) -- sits within the city and functions as a genuine recreational anchor, not a distant day-trip destination.

None of this comes without real trade-offs this page won't soften. Des Moines sits under Seattle-Tacoma International Airport's flight paths, and aircraft noise is a documented, ongoing concern for the community -- the Port of Seattle has run noise-mitigation programs here, some of which residents and reporting describe as needing repair years after installation, and south-flow arrival operations (roughly 65% of the year, more common in cooler months) bring landing traffic in over communities including Des Moines. Aggregator crime-rate data (CrimeGrade, treated here as directional, not an official uniform-crime-report figure) places Des Moines' overall safety percentile below the median for U.S. cities, with both violent- and property-crime rates reported above national averages. And a 2024 city ballot measure -- a levy lid lift meant to fund additional police staffing -- failed twice with voters (a August 2024 primary rejection and a subsequent attempt), meaning the city's 2025 base property tax levy stayed at its lower prior rate rather than the higher rate city leaders had proposed for public safety funding. None of these facts make Des Moines a bad market; they make it a real one, with a real mix of genuine waterfront assets and genuine, documented civic challenges that a glossy listing description would skip.

Finally, on Washington's specific tax framework, which matters for every page that follows: Washington has no state income tax, which means state and local government here leans more heavily on property tax and one of the country's higher combined sales tax rates (10.20% in Des Moines as of the fourth quarter of 2025 -- 6.5% state plus 3.7% local) than income-tax states do. Washington's constitution caps each individual taxing district's regular (non-voted) levy growth at 1% annually, but a property owner's total bill stacks multiple separate districts -- state, King County, the City of Des Moines, Highline Public Schools, South King Fire, and others -- each capped separately, plus any voter-approved excess levies that sit entirely outside that 1% limit. King County's own reporting shows total countywide property tax collections rising from roughly $7.7 billion in 2025 to roughly $8.4 billion for 2026, a roughly 10% year-over-year increase, alongside total assessed property values rising from roughly $873 billion to roughly $920 billion over the same period. This page's Property Tax Guide covers that framework, and Des Moines' specific position within it, in complete detail.