A gravel spit on the Salish Sea.
Three Tree Point is a low, triangle-shaped gravel spit that juts west-southwest into the east side of Puget Sound, roughly halfway between Seattle and Tacoma and just southwest of downtown Burien, Washington. Water wraps it on three sides — north, west, and south — and steep, madrona-and-fir bluffs rise behind it to the east.
It points almost directly at Vashon Island across the main channel, which makes it a natural place to watch weather roll in, ferries cross, and — if you're lucky and patient — orcas pass. Come summer, cabanas go up along the gravel at low tide, and the waters just offshore are a longtime favorite of Puget Sound scuba divers.
"Nothing can exceed the beauty of these waters, and their safety." — Lt. Charles Wilkes, charting Puget Sound, 1841.
One point, a few names.
This spit has answered to several names over the years — which is exactly why our house brands do too. We borrow them all as a small tribute to the place and the people who've loved it.
A gathering place, long before the charts.
Long before any surveyor gave it a name, Coast Salish peoples used this shoreline as a summer camp, a trading area, and a hunting and fishing ground. Early settlers recalled canoes pulled up on the sand and fish drying on racks along the beach — the point was a place people came to gather what the water and the tide provided.
That older rhythm — go to the water, take what the season offers, make it last — is the one we still try to keep on the label.
Where "Seacoma" comes from.
In 1902 the Three Tree Point Company bought 267 acres with roughly two and a half miles of waterfront and opened a summer resort the following July. For a few decades this was a weekend escape from the city — picnics, cabins, and a community clubhouse with a tennis court and a dance floor.
There were no roads worth the name yet, so people arrived by water. Small steamers of Puget Sound's "Mosquito Fleet" ran regular stops at the point — and among them were the vessels of the Seacoma Company. That name, along with the old beach-community name Seacoma Beach, is where our own comes from.
The store at the bottom of the hill.
For generations the little building at 16957 Maplewild Ave SW — down at the water where the road bottoms out — was the Three Tree Point General Store: the place you walked to for a paper, a popsicle, or a gallon of milk without driving up the hill. It's the kind of corner store a beach community organizes itself around.
That cherished spot has been revived. Today it's home to QED Coffee, an independent Seattle roaster that kept the old general-store bones and reopened it as the neighborhood's coffee stop — now pouring beer and wine and stocking snacks and general provisions, too. Visit QED at Three Tree Point →
Still a quiet, salt-worn point.
Today Three Tree Point is a densely built but low-key residential community — quiet most of the year, then all beach come summer. There's public shoreline access at the end of SW 170th Street — limited parking, no facilities, just beach. On a warm weekend the low tide fills with cabanas and canopies, divers kitting up at the water's edge, and it's a well-known spot along the Whale Trail for watching orcas pass from shore.
Visiting the point
If you go: pack it in and pack it out, respect the private homes that line the spit, and mind the tide tables — the beach is generous at low water and slim at high.
The point's biggest day.
If Three Tree Point has a holiday of its own, it's the Fourth of July. The community throws one of the area's largest block parties — an all-day affair up and down the spit that winds toward a fireworks show launched out over the water, the whole shoreline turned into a natural amphitheater facing Vashon.
It's a neighborhood effort, paid for by the community's own firework fund rather than a city budget, so the size of the show tracks the year's donations. But the ritual holds: flags on the porches, chairs on the beach, and the sound rolling back off the Sound after dark.
Goods named for a real shoreline.
Seacoma Supply Co. is a small-batch outfit that prints coastal goods to order in Burien — hoodies, tees, and caps built for sand walks, cabana afternoons, beach fires, long drizzles, and dock evenings. Every drop is a small tribute to this one stretch of the Salish Sea, under whichever of its names fits the piece: Three Tree Point, Sunkist Beach, or Seacoma.
No seasons, no hype — just gear that earns its keep on a grey coast. See the current drop →