By late September, South Hill's best-known outdoor space has already had its moment. Rose Hill peaked back in July, its roughly 1,500 bushes finishing their run through 150 varieties. The Lilac Garden closed its season even earlier, in May. Manito Park built its reputation on those two gardens, and for good reason. Both are spring and summer displays, and their peak has passed by October.
That's when more of the neighborhood's outdoor attention moves to its edges, west to a 65-acre arboretum along a creek and south along a bluff line where the trails were built by volunteers. The two spots could not be more different from each other, and picking the wrong one for the kind of walk you actually want is the easiest way to waste a good fall afternoon.
The Version With a Schedule
The John A. Finch Arboretum sits at 3404 W. Woodland Blvd, tucked into 65 acres along Garden Springs Creek. It holds more than 2,000 trees and shrubs representing over 600 species, which is a lot of ground to cover on foot but also means the color show is staggered rather than all-at-once. Different species turn on different weeks, so a visit in early October looks different from one in late October.
The arboretum also does something Manito doesn't: it puts a date on the calendar. The City of Spokane's Parks and Recreation department, working with Urban Forestry and Spokane County's Master Composters, holds a free Fall Leaf Festival there every year, typically a Saturday in mid-to-late October, running from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., rain or shine. Last year's festival ran October 18. The event turns a self-guided walk into something with a fixed start time: live music, vendors, a composting demonstration, and a leaf pile large enough for a family photo. If you want your fall walk to have a beginning and an end, this is the version of South Hill that gives you one.
The Version Without One
The High Drive Bluff has no festival, no fixed hours, and no single trailhead. Locals just call it "the Bluff," and it runs along more than 20 miles of trail on the steep hillside between High Drive and Hangman Creek, connecting down toward Qualchan Golf Course to the south. The nonprofit Friends of the Bluff maintains the network under an agreement with the City of Spokane Parks Department, doing the trail work, invasive plant removal, and fire suppression that keeps 600 acres of ponderosa pine and bunchgrass meadow usable year-round.
Access points run the length of the neighborhood: Polly Judd Park, the pullouts at 29th and 37th Avenues, Bernard Street, and the southern end near Hatch Road and 57th Avenue. None of them require a park entrance fee or a scheduled visit. You choose your own distance, your own elevation gain, and whether you're there for a quick loop before dinner or a longer route toward sunset. The Bluff's south-facing aspect means it holds onto its usability later into the year than shadier spots like Riverside State Park, so the window for using it doesn't close the moment the leaves are down.
Where the arboretum rewards a slow, guided walk with a defined payoff, the Bluff rewards whoever shows up with whatever time they have. A dog walker doing a fifteen-minute loop off the 29th Avenue pullout and a trail runner doing a five-mile out-and-back toward Hatch Road are using the same trail system for entirely different reasons, and both work.
Access points worth knowing if you haven't used the Bluff before:
- Polly Judd Park, off 14th Avenue, the northernmost entry point
- 29th Avenue pullout, one of the most direct routes onto the middle trail tier
- 37th Avenue pullout, similar access a few blocks south
- Bernard Street, close to a turnaround and additional parking
- Hatch Road and 57th Avenue, the southern terminus near Qualchan Golf Course
Two Trails, Two Kinds of Fall
The contrast isn't just about scenery. It's about what each place asks of you. Finch Arboretum is flat, mapped, and organized around a species collection that someone planted on purpose. The Bluff is steep, informal, and shaped by decades of volunteer labor rather than a landscape plan. One gives you a schedule to build a Saturday around. The other gives you a trail system that doesn't care what day it is.
That split matters more this year than usual, because the Bluff crews have been active. In March, more than 50 volunteers with Friends of the Bluff planted 300 native shrubs to replace ground cover lost during winter fire remediation work, which means some sections of trail look different than they did last fall. If you haven't walked the Bluff in a year or two, this is a reasonable season to go back and see what's changed.
Where the Walk Ends
Either route eventually points you toward the same finish line: the South Perry District, a few blocks of Perry Street that have become the neighborhood's default answer to "where do we go after." The Shop was one of the first businesses to anchor the district's turnaround and still runs a full coffee and food menu. Perry Street Brewing pours Northwest-style craft beer a short walk from there. South Perry Lantern serves as the district's upscale anchor with a wine list built around a seasonal menu, and The Grain Shed, part brewery and part bakery, sources its ingredients from Eastern Washington's own wheat country.
None of that requires choosing between the arboretum and the Bluff ahead of time. Both routes end up close enough to Perry Street that the walk and the stop afterward function as one loop, whichever trailhead you started from.
Why This Is Worth Knowing Now
South Hill's identity gets built around Manito Park more than any other single feature of the neighborhood, and that's fair for ten months of the year. Manito's gardens carry the spring and summer, and the arboretum and the Bluff carry the fall. They ask for opposite things from the person walking them: one wants you there on a specific Saturday with your family, the other wants you there whenever you have an hour and a direction you feel like walking.
Knowing which one matches the walk you want makes for a good October afternoon on South Hill.
If you're weighing South Hill against other parts of Spokane, or you already live here and want a local perspective on how the neighborhood works block by block, Alejandro Ventura is always happy to talk through it, fall color included.
