1224 N Herron Rd NW, Lakebay
$545,000
3.86 Acres
147 Ft of West-Facing Waterfront
1 Bed
1 Bath
1,055 Sq Ft
Belong to the quiet of the forest on the shores of the Salish Sea. A hand-built log cabin made from the surrounding trees stands on wooded acres facing west, facing water, facing sunset. The cabin’s multitude of windows look to Case Inlet, Herron Island, and the Olympic Mountains. This is a place for people who watch the sun go down, who listen for birds, who learn the names of mountain peaks and native plants, who seek a life near the water, seek a weekend respite, seek a summer retreat. Whether you live here every day, or just as often as you can get away, life here will enrich you. That is, if you’re fed by light on water, trees talking in the wind, foxgloves in the woods and roadsides, the crackle and hiss of fire in the stove, dall porpoise sightings—sleek and fleeting, encounters with seals, the peace and freedom of paddling a kayak, or tacking to catch the breeze, then yes; your life will be enriched here.
The cabin’s logs come from the land it lives on, with a floor from forests farther afield. Covered by a good metal roof, plumbed for propane, with a gas range, and a wood burning stove for heat, this beloved Key Peninsula home is ready for restoration work and investment; come with a vision. Come with intent to repair and take care. Consider seeking a permit to restore beach access with a set of stairs to the shore below. A log house restoration professional has provided estimated costs and a strategy for repairing damaged logs. This will need to be a cash sale, but you certainly aren’t starting at square one. Already in place is a permitted septic with a drain field approved for 3 bedrooms, a pumphouse, and well. Already in place is the land—rare, west-facing, medium bank waterfront with tidelands, land where ferns unfurl, trilliums bloom, and chanterelles grow.
Life on the peninsula can offer you solitude, but doesn’t require isolation. The balance is really up to you, and that’s probably true whether you’re living in the trees above a saltwater beach, or six floors up in the city. It’s a place set apart, but not so hard to reach: drive 35 minutes to cross The Narrows into Tacoma, 7 to the public boat launch, 13 to groceries, cafes, and supplies. Visit our location section to learn more about all the places you can get to from your door. We even calculated the distance and driving time to help you imagine how this home fits into the wider community.
Move further through the story of this home to a special section for images of other seasons here, times of light and dark, fog and rain, evening and sunset. These images are from one who calls this place home, images we can’t capture in one spring afternoon, images to help you imagine life here, images that honor the dark of February alongside the light of summer.
Continue on for the video tour, many more photos, details, and a list of 20 destinations nearby.
Main Floor
Open Living & Dining Space
Kitchen
Bathroom
Covered Porch
Second Floor
Large Bedroom with Loft
Basement
Cellar
Electrical Panel
Crawl Space Access
Grounds
3.86 Acres
147 Feet of Medium Bank Waterfront
Tidelands & Wooded Land
Long Private Driveway
Pumphouse
3 Bedroom Septic Drain Field
Parking Areas
Covered Porch
Park your vehicle at the end of the long, wooded drive and start by breathing in, then listen. You’ll smell trees, and depending on the weather that may be the sweet scent of toasting sap, or the damp musk of mossy boughs. Depending also on the tide, you may smell the beach, the salt and tang of drying seaweed. As you listen, you may hear rain on a metal roof, or drops from an earlier shower pattering down through maple leaves. You may hear wind in the firs, the chatter of a bald eagle, the hoarse rasp of a great blue heron. If you’ve breathed, once you’ve listened, you’re ready to step up onto the covered porch and open the doors wide.
Open Living Space
When you first step in you’ll be drawn across the tongue and groove floor, beneath the fir beams, to the windows. So go look. Look out through huckleberry, madrona, cedar, ferns, and fir to the Salish Sea. In every corner, in the open spaces between, you’ll feel the homey simplicity of this log house. The ceilings are high and the windows many. If you’re lucky enough to visit on a clear afternoon, you’ll be here to soak up the glow when the sun is in the west.
There's a wood burning stove for heat, but the home is plumbed for propane, so a propane stove or heater can be installed for a second heat source. Just before the entrance to the bathroom there’s a door that opens into the basement. This is a cellar style basement where you'll find the electrical panel and crawl space access, and can take a good look at the foundation.
Although the antique armoire at the base of the stairs won't remain, it's a good suggestion for how to add closet space, somewhere to stow coats, and boots, and blankets. Before thinking too much about furnishings though, you'll want to focus on repairing damaged logs and getting the cabin sealed up a bit tighter against wear from weather and insects, so you and this home can live together for a good long while.
Kitchen
The kitchen, with its wood-paned windows to the green leaves and needled conifers outside, beckons from its corner. Equipped with a sink and small countertop, the water comes from a well here on the land. A never-used gas range is ready for cooking once a propane tank is installed. The tank can be purchased or leased from the gas company. This is the room where you’ll make the oatmeal and pancakes, sandwiches and stew, the room the kettle will sing from, the room you’ll walk to in your slippers when it’s time to get the coffee brewing.
Bathroom
You'll find the bathroom on the north side of the house on the main floor. It's a simple arrangement with all the necessities: clawfoot tub, toilet, sink and vanity, with a linen cupboard, pegs for towels, and a view (a view is a bathroom necessity, surely). Look out to the trees or up into the knots in the wood ceiling while you bathe. There's also a door out to the yard here, so you can step right in from your outdoor rambles for a wash-up.
2nd Floor Bedroom with Loft
Take the stairs up to reach this spacious second floor bedroom with views to the water and the woods. This is where you watch the sunset for the third time. The story we’ve heard is you watch it first from the beach, run up to the bank and watch it again, then climb up to the bedroom to see it one more time. If that sounds like the way to live—and maybe you can picture the one whose hand you’ll tug along the path and up the stairs—this may be the home for you. Restore a stairway to the beach and you can try this sunset ritual yourself.
The floors up here are made from the same car decking tongue and groove lumber found below. A loft on the east side of the room brings extra space, but make sure to install a railing or barrier for safety. You'll see French doors on both the east and west walls of the room. These doors remain closed as balconies haven’t yet been constructed, but are part of the original vision for the bedroom—one balcony for eastern morning light, one for afternoon and evening; a fine vision indeed.
There's room up here for an additional sitting area, or set a large table near the windows to take advantage of the good afternoon light. Then read what you read, create what you create, wonder what you wonder, write what you write.
Cabin Exterior
On this north side of the house, near the door into the bathroom you'll find some of the logs that are damaged and in need of restoration work. The larger section in rough shape is at the front, west-face of the house, around and below the front windows.
This cabin is a 1 bedroom home, but the septic drain field is approved for 3 bedrooms. The metal roof was installed in 2006, and the cabin itself was built in the mid-1980s. Even with restoration work needed, there's so much value here—just having a permitted septic in place, along with a pump house and well is a huge step.
Grounds
1224 N Herron is the green roof not far from the shore in just about the middle of the photo above.
When you’re facing west, facing sunset, Case Inlet, Herron Island, and the Olympic Mountains on acreage including shore with tideland rights, there isn’t a day or time without something to look at. Sometimes you’ll look at an overcast sky with fog and mist hanging so low the opposite shore disappears. Sometimes you’ll look at rain drops dripping from the tip of every leaf long after it’s finished falling from the sky. And sometimes, particularly in the afternoon, when the sun is jumping and scattering and multiplying itself on the surface of the saltwater, you’ll look at that same light bouncing in through the windows, illuminating the wood floors and log walls until everything in sight is glowing. Do you see what we mean when we say this place is more than acres and ground and repairs?
The 3.86 acre lot extends west to east from the tidelands, across the beach, up the bank, through the woods, and across the road. It's private and secluded in the trees, with the shore not far below. As we mentioned before, there is no direct beach access these days, but until that’s replaced you can reach the beach just half a mile up the road at the Herron Ferry Dock for a walk along the shore or to put your kayak in. The land is mostly natural, wooded, and grown with brush, but its easy to take the path from the cabin toward the bank for even clearer water and mountain views. Imagine decks and platforms, maybe even outdoor covered areas for rainy days.
Several vehicles fit in this cleared at the bottom of the driveway, near the shed built using materials from the original home that existed here before the log cabin.
A long, wooded, private driveway leads through the property to the cabin ending at a newly-built pump house.
Even as you just begin to approach the cabin from the driveway you can see the water beyond. Don’t miss the rhododendrons in spring bloom. The covered porch and deep eaves on the north side of the cabin are good places for stacking firewood. Plant a shade garden, or let the woods be your garden. For now, the yard maintenance is just mowing and trimming back the brush. It’s lush and wild with honeysuckle twining upward for sun and bracken fern nodding lacy heads at the forest’s edge.
Light & Dark - Always Beauty
Now for the glimpses of life here from one who calls it home. You can see these images are captured through a lens of love and belonging. This place is more than wood and ground and beach and water. It is home. If you look, look with reverence. This place is a rarity—examine a map of the world and you’ll see there aren’t many habitats resembling our region where glacier-carved waterways connect to the Pacific Ocean. And here, in this extraordinary habitat, there aren’t many places left surrounded by trees, with a beach to belong to, with a view to sunsets over a range of wild mountains.
February, early afternoon
February, early afternoon
April, late afternoon
April, late afternoon
May, morning
May, evening
July, evening
July, evening
July, late evening
See these photos, and more like them, @herronhome.
Location
From up in the air above 1224 N Herron, we look out over Case Inlet and Harstine Island to the Olympic Mountain Range in the distance.
The log cabin is just left of center in the image above to the right of the point where the boulder bulkhead ends. See Carr Inlet on the opposite shore with Mt. Tahoma watching over all in the distance.
Penrose Point State Park - Wooded trails, beaches, camping, boating, picnics, and clamming less than 10 minutes from the cabin.
This log cabin—with its acres, waterfront, and view—is set on the Key Peninsula, a narrow strip of land at the southern end of the Salish Sea with public beaches, state parks, small farms, lake communities, and evergreen forest. Life on the peninsula is life connected to the water, to the tides, to migrating birds, and to the changing seasons displayed in the trees—golden maple leaves in fall, blooming dogwood in spring, branches hung with moss all year.
Use your Pierce County Library Card at the Key Center Library, serving the community from this location since 1981.
The Key Peninsula is home to 3 public elementary schools (with a new Evergreen Elementary expected to be ready for Fall 2021!) and 1 public middle school. Students cross the Purdy Spit to attend high school at Peninsula High. Along with 3 state parks, you can visit community Key Pen Parks with trails, playgrounds, picnic areas, and even a splash pad coming this summer at Gateway Park.
You’ll find groceries, a public library, coffee shop, wine shop, doctor’s office, restaurants, a post office, and even a nursery for your gardening needs in Key Center, just 13 minutes from home. The post office in Home (a small waterfront community nearby) is even closer. One of the best parts of living out on the KP is access to innumerable places to put a boat in the water. You’ll find one of those in Home as well, right there at the public boat launch on A Street.
The Herron Island Ferry Dock is your close neighbor. Take the 1/2 mile trip to the beach at the dock to watch the ferry come and go from the mainland to the island across Case Inlet.
Community life on the peninsula includes playgrounds and ball fields, a civic center, improvement club, and opportunities to join in annual festivals like the Key Peninsula Farm Tour or the Art Walk. You can read even more about the Key Peninsula community on our page dedicated to this special location.
For certain errands, many peninsula residents drive across the spit to Gig Harbor where Costco, Target, Fred Meyer, and other businesses can be found. Many of those amenities are over half an hour away, so support the local grocery first, then make a list to make the most of your trips across the spit.
Take a look at our list of 20 local destinations and the distance from the door of 1224 N Herron to get an even better idea of where this home fits in the community. We hope you’ll come explore!
20 Local Destinations
Image from Close to Home Espresso - Order coffee and a seasonal bouquet at the window, then sit out at a table with friends at Close to Home in Key Center.
Cities & Towns
Home, WA: 2.8 miles, 5 minutes
Key Center: 8 miles, 12 minutes
Downtown Gig Harbor: 21.8 miles, 32 minutes
Tacoma: 26 miles, 35 minutes (45 to downtown)
Launch your boat from the public launch in friendly Home, WA just over 3 miles from 1224 N Herron.
Groceries, Supplies & Services
Lakebay Post Office: 2.7 miles, 5 minutes
Key Center Library: 8 miles, 12 minutes
Sunnycrest Nursery: 8 miles, 12 minutes
Food Market at Key Center: 8.1 miles, 13 minutes
Parks & Activities
Herron Island Ferry Dock: 0.5 mile, 1 minute
Home Boat Launch: 3.3 miles, 7 minutes
Penrose Point State Park: 4.7 miles, 9 minutes
Maple Hollow Park: 5.5 miles, 9 minutes
The Longbranch Improvement Club: 6.2 miles, 10 minutes
Joemma Beach State Park: 6.5 miles, 11 minutes
Key Peninsula Civic Center: 8.2 miles, 13 minutes
Lakebay Marina Resort where you can order fish and chips, burgers, ice cream, and beer is just 7 minutes down the road.
Dining & Drinks
Lakebay Marina & Resort: 3.6 miles, 7 minutes
Blend Wine Shop: 7.9 miles, 12 minutes
Close to Home Espresso: 8.1 miles, 13 minutes
Madrona Cafe: 8.1 miles, 12 minutes
El Sombrero Family Mexican: 8.1 miles, 12 minutes
More Information From the Listing Agent
Come see this Key Peninsula land and home in person to get a feel for the character, size, opportunity, and location.
And feel free to call or text me, Michael Duggan, at 253-226-2787. I’ll be happy to answer your questions about this property, or talk with you about Tacoma, the peninsula, and the local real estate market in general.
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