Things to Do in Silverdale, WA

Kitsap Mall: A Genuine Regional Shopping Destination

The Kitsap Mall -- 848,161 square feet, opened August 1, 1985, with current anchor tenants including JCPenney, Dick's Sporting Goods, Kohl's, Barnes & Noble, Cost Plus World Market, and WinCo Foods -- is a real, substantial regional shopping destination, not a small strip mall. For a visitor or resident, it's the practical center of Silverdale's commercial activity and the single most-visited built landmark in the community, reflecting its role in shifting Kitsap County's retail core here from downtown Bremerton back in the mid-1980s.

Beyond the mall's own footprint, the surrounding Silverdale Way and Bucklin Hill Road corridor holds a wide surrounding band of additional big-box and specialty retail, restaurants, and services -- meaning a visitor planning a shopping trip here can realistically treat the whole corridor as a single, extended destination rather than the mall building alone.

Silverdale Waterfront Park: The Public Face of Old Town

Silverdale Waterfront Park, stretching along Dyes Inlet in the heart of Old Town Silverdale, offers a pier, a beach, a walking path, a gazebo, picnic areas, and a playground -- genuine, free public waterfront access in a community where much of the built environment is otherwise commercial and drive-oriented. This is the single most accessible way for a visitor to experience Dyes Inlet directly without a boat, and it sits within walking distance of Old Town's small storefronts and the Port of Silverdale's marina.

Old Mill Park and the Clear Creek Trail

At Dyes Inlet's northern end, Old Mill Park offers a genuinely different kind of outdoor experience -- forested trail networks, a beach, picnic areas, restrooms, and access to the Clear Creek Trail Estuary, plus two officially recognized Washington State Audubon birding sites. The Clear Creek Trail itself runs roughly seven to eight miles from Silverdale Waterfront Park north through wetlands, remnant forest, and the middle of Silverdale's most developed urban areas up to Trigger Avenue, offering a genuinely long, varied walking and biking route that connects the community's commercial core to its more natural northern reaches.

This combination -- a real regional shopping mall a short walk or drive from a genuine multi-mile forested trail system -- is a distinctive pairing this page hasn't found replicated in quite the same way at other markets on this site. A visitor with a few hours to spare can realistically combine a mall stop with a stretch of Clear Creek Trail walking in a single outing, something the mall corridor's own layout makes genuinely practical given how close the trail runs to the developed core.

The Port of Silverdale Marina

The Port of Silverdale's own marina in Old Town, offering more than 300 slips and transient moorage, is worth a visit even for a non-boater -- it's a genuine, active piece of local maritime infrastructure with roots tracing to a citizen-formed special port district back in 1920, and it anchors Old Town's waterfront character alongside Silverdale Waterfront Park.

Nearby: Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor and Bremerton

Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor itself, several miles north via Highway 3, is an active military installation and not a general public attraction -- it is not a tourist site a visitor can casually drive onto, and this page does not have confirmed information about any public tour or visitor-access program at Bangor specifically. For visitors specifically interested in Kitsap's naval history in a genuinely public, accessible format, downtown Bremerton's Puget Sound Navy Museum and the USS Turner Joy museum ship, a short drive south, offer that experience instead -- covered on this site's Bremerton pages, not duplicated here.

A Practical Day Plan for a First-Time Visitor

A visitor with limited time genuinely can experience both of Silverdale's identities in a single day -- a morning walk on the Clear Creek Trail or a stop at Silverdale Waterfront Park, followed by an afternoon at the Kitsap Mall corridor for shopping and lunch, followed by an early-evening stroll around Old Town Silverdale's marina and small storefronts. That combination of genuine outdoor recreation and genuine shopping convenience within a compact geographic area is, honestly, the core of what Silverdale offers a visitor that a purely residential waterfront town or a purely commercial retail corridor elsewhere couldn't match on its own.

For a visitor with more time, day trips south to downtown Bremerton's Puget Sound Navy Museum and USS Turner Joy, or north toward Poulsbo's own distinct downtown, are both realistic additions given Silverdale's central position along Highway 3 within Kitsap County -- worth mentioning here since many visitors treat Silverdale as a practical home base for exploring the broader peninsula rather than a single-destination stop.

What This Page Does Not Know

This page does not have confirmed current hours, admission fees (where applicable), or seasonal closure information for Silverdale Waterfront Park, Old Mill Park, or the Clear Creek Trail, and does not have confirmed information about any public tour access at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor.

Confirm current hours and conditions directly with Kitsap County Parks for the county-maintained sites, and with the Port of Silverdale directly for marina visitor information, before planning a visit.