Millersylvania State Park hours, Discover Pass and history

Millersylvania State Park, at 12245 Tilley Road S south of Olympia, is open from 8 a.m. to dusk in its winter schedule and from 6:30 a.m. to dusk in summer. As of November 2026, Washington State Parks charges $10 for a one-day Discover Pass or $45 for an annual one to park there, unless you are camping. From Enumclaw it is about 62 miles, roughly an hour and a half without traffic by an OpenStreetMap routing estimate.

The park exists because of a family that, by State Parks' account, largely kept to itself, and many unsubstantiated legends exist about it. The three Miller children never married, and a 1921 will left their estate to the state for a park. One rumor made their father a bodyguard to an Austrian emperor. State Parks calls the legends unsubstantiated.

What are Millersylvania State Park's hours in winter?

The park's page lists winter hours of 8 a.m. to dusk, against 6:30 a.m. to dusk in summer, and does not give the dates the schedules switch. State Parks' winter schedule page, a table of seasonal closures, shows the park's day-use area and watercraft launch as open, with the campground only partly open. Dusk comes early in mid-November, so the sunset time for the day you go sets your real window. The park page lists the ranger station and gift shop as open daily for one hour from 10 a.m. and one hour from 2 p.m., which is easy to miss, so call (360) 753-1519 if you need it.

The summer food and drink stands are shut by then. State Parks lists the lakefront boat rental, the taphouse and the firewood stall as open Memorial Day through Labor Day, and the espresso stand as daily from May 22 to Labor Day in 2026. Plan on bringing your own.

Do you need a Discover Pass at Millersylvania?

A Discover Pass is needed for a vehicle parked at the park, and it is not needed if you arrive on foot or by bicycle. The Discover Pass page lists $45 a year, good for a year after you buy it, or $10 for a day, and a $99 citation for a vehicle without a displayed pass. The same state site says a registered camper's fee includes day-use parking at the park where they are staying.

The prices and the free days are set by the state, and both can change. The free days are posted each year on the Discover Pass free parking days page. That page's list for 2026 ends with Veterans Day, November 11, so no free day remains in 2026, and the page lists only 2026 days as of November 2, 2026, so check it for later years. For the passes near home and what each agency accepts, see our guide to which pass you need near Enumclaw.

How far is Millersylvania from Enumclaw?

By an OpenStreetMap-based routing service, the drive is about 62 miles and about 90 minutes with no traffic, so allow more on a Friday afternoon. State Parks' own blog lists the park at 20 minutes from Olympia, which makes it a natural second stop on a South Sound day. Our guides to Tumwater Falls Park and the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge cover two other places in that corner of the state, each with its own hours.

What can you do at Millersylvania near Olympia in November?

The park's page describes it as an "old-growth forest camping park on the shores of Deep Lake" with two swimming beaches and miles of forested hiking and biking trails. In November the trails are the draw. It lists dogs as allowed on a leash and horses as not allowed.

Read the alerts box before you leave. Read on November 2, 2026, it showed a Level 2 burn ban, posted August 2, 2026, which it summarizes this way: "Wood fires restricted to fire pits in designated areas. Gas and propane allowed. Charcoal may be restricted." The page also says the trail near campsite 31 is closed indefinitely, because of the disrepair of the boardwalk. The page does not say when the ban ends, and the box is where it will say so.

Deep Lake is limited to 5 mph with no wake, and the boat launch is hand-carry only, meaning you carry the boat to the water. The history page gives the lake's depth as 17 feet.

Is the forest really old growth?

State Parks calls it that, on the park page and in its blog, but neither gives the trees' ages, so this article does not either. The park's history page adds a complication that any honest account should keep: after the Millers settled the land in the 1880s, it says, "timber was selectively cut for sale to local sawmills," and by December 1933 Civilian Conservation Corps crews were felling snags, meaning dead standing trees, and clearing debris. So this is a forest that was selectively logged and then managed as a park, not an untouched one.

For a comparison closer to home, Federation Forest State Park on SR 410 is the old-growth grove the state's clubwomen saved after the highway took the first one.

Who were the Millers, and why did they give the park away?

John Leonard Miller moved his family to what became Thurston County in 1881, according to State Parks' history of the park, and by 1882 had bought the Sandreth homestead and surrounding lands, and an orchard of 179 pear, apple and plum trees was established. His son Frederick attended Stanford and returned to teach at a school a mile from the homestead. In 1921 Frederick wrote a will deeding the estate to the state for use as a park, so that everyone could keep enjoying "Miller's Glade."

His sister Christina, the last survivor, signed a quitclaim deed on February 13, 1924, keeping the use of the house and the grounds around it, enough pasture for two cows, for her lifetime. She died on October 10, 1926. The park was dedicated on August 10, 1928, and the Legislature accepted the gift in a bill the governor approved on March 19, 1931.

State Parks does not say where the legends began, only that the family largely kept to itself. State Parks cites a 1930s newspaper article by John McClelland of the National Park Service, in which a mail carrier reported that the father, John Leonard Miller, refused mail postmarked from Austria. When asked why, he is said to have answered, "If I lift that mail, the senders would know where I am. This I do not want." State Parks says many of the legends about the family are unsubstantiated. A stone marker in the park, seen in a Wikimedia Commons photograph, names three donors, Frederick J. X., Christine Mary and Matilda Sophia Miller. State Parks names only one sister, Christina, so the marker's Christine may be the same woman spelled differently, but State Parks does not say which sister she was.

What did the Civilian Conservation Corps build here?

According to State Parks, CCC Company 1232 arrived in October 1933, 200 young men strong and from New York and New Jersey, and lived in four bunkhouses near the old Miller house. By 1939 two more companies had passed through, and the corps had built seventeen large buildings, including a caretaker's house, four kitchens, two bathhouses and two comfort stations. The National Park Service's NPGallery record lists the park as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places, with a record dated September 16, 2009, and names the Civilian Conservation Corps among its architects. HistoryLink's history of Washington state parks names the kitchen shelters and bathhouses at Millersylvania among the corps' work in the state.

The same sources record a harder chapter. State Parks says 51 Black enrollees worked at the park in 1934, that the State Parks Committee wrote to a congressman asking that they be kept from park visitors, and that the camp superintendent was told to create a separate bathing beach for them. HistoryLink adds that they were assigned kitchen work, which denied them construction training, and that the corps' national head then ruled that Black enrollees could work only in their own states. State Parks says they stayed six months before being sent back east, and HistoryLink dates their reassignment out of the state to 1934.

Can you camp at Millersylvania in winter?

Partly. The winter schedule says sites 1 through 7 and 226 through 248 are open all year, that reservations are taken all year, and that the water is turned off around November 1 to March 31, with a winter water supply near the dump station and water kept on at hookup sites. The park page lists a trailer dump fee of $5 per use.

Before you go

Check three pages on the morning you leave: the alerts box on the park's page for the burn ban and the boardwalk closure, the winter schedule for campground status, and the Discover Pass page for the price. Pack water, since the winter schedule says the water is turned off around November 1 to March 31, and look up the sunset time so the park's dusk closing does not catch you at the far end of a trail. The ranger station number is (360) 753-1519, and the park's email address is millersylvania@parks.wa.gov. If you also plan a longer winter outing, our guide to Wallace Falls State Park in winter covers another state park's winter conditions.