Looking for the best parks and outdoor spots in Santa Monica? A quintessential California beach city, Santa Monica pairs its famous pier and beach with clifftop parks and ocean paths. This local guide covers Santa Monica’s marquee parks and green spaces, its trails and outdoor recreation, neighborhood gems, and how to find where locals actually go to get outside.

Santa Monica’s best parks & green spaces

Palisades Park — a clifftop stretch of green above the beach with palm trees and ocean sunsets — is Santa Monica’s scenic centerpiece. Tongva Park’s modern landscaped grounds near the pier, and the wide Santa Monica State Beach, anchor the outdoor scene alongside the iconic Santa Monica Pier.

Trails, waterfronts & outdoor recreation in Santa Monica

The beach offers swimming, and the Marvin Braude Bike Trail (“The Strand”) runs for miles along the sand toward Venice and beyond, a beloved biking and skating route. The pier and beach support volleyball, and nearby canyon trails offer hiking with ocean views.

Neighborhood parks & hidden gems

Reed Park, Clover Park, and the Annenberg Community Beach House (a public beachfront with a pool) are local favorites, and the nearby Santa Monica Mountains trailheads add hiking away from the crowds. To see how the areas connect, check our guide to the best neighborhoods in Santa Monica.

What to know about Santa Monica parks

The beach and pier get crowded; beach parking is pricey — arrive early or use the Expo Line. The Strand is a great car-free route. The marine layer keeps mornings cool. Palisades Park and the beach are free.

Where Santa Monica locals actually go outdoors

The best-kept outdoor secrets — the quiet trailhead, the uncrowded picnic spot, the park that’s perfect right now — usually come from locals, not brochures. On Neighborhood Nurturers’ Santa Monica community, real Santa Monica neighbors share their favorite outdoor spots and what’s worth visiting this season. For more ideas, see our guide to the best things to do in Santa Monica. Join your Santa Monica neighbors free and discover the best local outdoor spots →

Fitting it into a day in Santa Monica

The parks and trails here are where neighbors actually spend their weekends, each with its own character. What sets Santa Monica apart is how close everything sits together. Start near the Santa Monica Pier, work in one of the spots from this guide, and you are minutes from Palisades Park if you want to keep going. Locals often round out time outdoors with a detour to the beach bike path or a quieter stop at Tongva Park. Because the distances are short, you can improvise as you go rather than lock the whole day down in advance.

More Santa Monica guides

Santa Monica rewards people who dig a little deeper. These related guides map the same neighborhoods from different starting points: Dog-friendly Santa Monica, Things to do in Santa Monica, Free things to do in Santa Monica — enough to plan a whole day or two.

Get a local’s take

Guides are a starting point; the current, on-the-ground details come from people who live in Santa Monica. Hours shift, favorites change, and residents always know what is genuinely worth it now. Ask Santa Monica neighbors directly or join your town community free to hear from real locals.

Palisades Park: 26 Acres of Cliff-Top

Palisades Park is the park that defines Santa Monica, and its dimensions surprise people: 26 acres, laid out as a long narrow ribbon along the top of the coastal bluffs above Pacific Coast Highway. It is not a park you sit in the middle of; it is a park you walk the length of, which is exactly why walkers, joggers and people-watchers treat it as the city’s main artery.

What is actually in it, beyond the view: benches and picnic areas the whole way along, artworks and monuments, a rose garden, and the Camera Obscura Art Lab at 1450 Ocean Avenue. One honest note on that last one: the building is a free City of Santa Monica cultural facility, but the historic camera obscura mechanism itself has had restricted public access in recent years and now generally opens for special events rather than daily viewing. Confirm before making a special trip for the optical device.

The palm trees along this stretch are the image most people carry away from Santa Monica, and the sunset from the bluffs is the best free thing in the city. It is also the most exposed park in town — the afternoon onshore wind here is constant, and it is colder than the inland parks by a noticeable margin.

Douglas Park: The Strangest and Best of Them

Douglas Park is 10.7 acres and it was formerly a movie studio lot, which goes some way to explaining why its amenity list reads like no other park in Southern California. It has a bowling green. It has a large duck pond, reflecting pools and a fly fishing area. It also carries the ordinary things — sports facilities, a playground, drinking water, restrooms — and it is wheelchair accessible.

The duck pond is the reason families with small children keep coming back, and the bowling green is the reason a completely different demographic does. It is the most genuinely charming park in the city and it is almost entirely unvisited by tourists, because it sits inland with no ocean view to draw them.

Clover Park and Virginia Avenue Park

Clover Park is 17.9 acres of lawn and shade trees in the southeast of the city, and it is the sports park. Baseball and soccer fields, volleyball courts, fitness stations, and picnic areas with barbecue grills. It is next to the airport land, which means the flight path is overhead and the park is correspondingly less precious about noise than the north-side parks. For an organised game or a large family gathering with a grill, it is the best choice in Santa Monica.

Virginia Avenue Park is 9.5 acres and is the community heart of the Pico District. It holds a community centre, the Pico branch library, and hosts a weekly farmers market, alongside lawn, walking paths, a playground and picnic tables. Of all the parks in the city this is the one with the deepest ongoing community programming rather than just facilities, and it is the one most worth visiting if you want to understand the residential side of Santa Monica rather than the beach side.

Tongva Park downtown is the newest and most designed of the set: six acres named for the Tongva people, laid out in four sections — Observation Hill, Discovery Hill, Garden Hill and Gathering Hill — planted with native and climate-appropriate species. Discovery Hill carries a splash pad, play area and shaded picnic space; Gathering Hill has an amphitheatre that hosts free concerts; and the park contains the Weather Field installation. It is two blocks from the Promenade and vastly more pleasant.

The Beach Path Counts as a Park

Functionally, the biggest piece of public open space Santa Monica has access to is not a park at all. The Marvin Braude Bike Trail is a 22-mile paved path running along the shoreline of Santa Monica Bay, from Will Rogers State Beach in Pacific Palisades at the north end to Torrance County Beach at the south, with Santa Monica roughly in the middle.

It is flat, fully separated from traffic, and it is where most of the city actually exercises. Walking, running, cycling and skating all work on it, and you can do any distance you like because you turn around whenever you want. Plan for the wind: the afternoon onshore breeze is reliable, so head out into it and come back with it behind you.

One important rule that catches out a lot of people: dogs are not permitted on the sand anywhere in Santa Monica. Leashed dogs are allowed on the boardwalks, the pier and this path, but not on the beach itself. There is a dedicated guide on this site covering that in full.

Practical Park Notes

Parking varies enormously by park. Douglas Park and Clover Park are straightforward inland parks with manageable street parking. Palisades Park and Tongva Park sit in the downtown and beachfront zones where structures, meters and residential permit restrictions all apply, and getting this wrong is the main expense of a park afternoon. The parking guide linked from this page covers which system applies where.

Go inland when the coast is grey. During the May Gray and June Gloom pattern, the bluff-top and beachfront parks can sit under overcast until early afternoon while parks a mile east are in full sun. This is a real and useful difference, and it is why residents pick their park by the weather rather than by preference on those mornings.

September and October are the best park months of the year — warmest, clearest, and past the summer crowds.

Park rules are posted and enforced. Santa Monica publishes park rules covering alcohol, amplified sound, barbecue use and reservable areas, and enforcement is real. For anything involving a large gathering, a grill or amplified music, check the City’s current rules and reservation requirements first.

Facilities, hours and access change — fields close for maintenance, playgrounds get rebuilt, and pond and pool features go offline seasonally. Confirm before you rely on a specific amenity.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best parks in Santa Monica?

Palisades Park on the bluffs, Tongva Park near the pier, Santa Monica State Beach, and the Annenberg Community Beach House.

Where can you bike in Santa Monica?

The Marvin Braude Bike Trail (‘The Strand’) runs for miles along the beach toward Venice and beyond, ideal for biking and skating.

Where do locals go outdoors in Santa Monica?

Locals favor Palisades Park at sunset, the beach Strand, and nearby canyon trails — Santa Monica neighbors share their favorite spots in our community.