On a railbed that once carried Idaho wool away to market a bicyclist in orange lycra cruises past Boxcar Bend, her shoulders hunched over her curved handlebars.
On a track that once delivered visitors to the fabled Sun Valley resort a horseback rider crosses an old iron railroad bridge, pausing briefly to gaze at the Big Wood River flowing by below.
Where the Union Pacific once hauled freight and promoted passenger service the rails have been lifted up and replaced with a 21-mile-long lane of asphalt and textured bridle paths stretching up the middle of the Wood River Valley. After 16 years of planning and construction, including last summer's completion of two tunnels crossing beneath Highway 75, the Wood River Trails System has reached maturity. Idaho's longest "rails-to-trails" conversion now provides thousands of recreationists a scenic place to walk, rollerblade, bicycle, ski or ride horseback free of motorized traffic. Many Blaine County residents also use it commute to work between the towns of Bellevue, Hailey, Ketchum and Sun Valley.
"This summer has just been incredible," said Mary Austin Crofts, executive director of the Blaine County Recreation District and a key figure in the development of the trail system. "We've been seeing upwards of 2,000 people out on the trails each weekend. We didn't plan on it being such a hit." A count of trail users during the past year tallied an estimated 240,000 user days, according to Crofts, far more than the Recreation District ever expected.
A tumble-down trestle bridge that once crossed Trail Creek on Sun Valley Company property stands between 17 miles of pathway to the south and another four miles through Ketchum to the Lake Creek area north of town. Once replaced, the 21-mile stretch of continuous trail will be complete.
Intended or not, this ambitious trail system has become an important tourist amenity in the Sun Valley-Ketchum resort area. "Many of the visitors who come to Sun Valley are from places where they are used to hiking and bicycling a lot more than most of us in Idaho," said Carl Wilgus, administrator of the Idaho Division of Tourism Development. "The trail system isn't a tourist attraction, per se, but it is a great enhancement to the area," he noted. The trail system has received national attention, winning the Land & Water Conservation Fund's Take Pride in America Award in 1990 and the Alexander Calder Conservation Award in 1991. Last year Crofts was recruited by the national Rails-To-Trails Conservancy to help write a manual on how to build and manage multi-purpose trails. She was also named Citizen of the Year by the Sun Valley-Ketchum Chamber of Commerce, largely for her work on the trail system.
"I came in and got the glory, but its been a long, long process and there were a lot of other people involved," said Crofts, who has been with the Rec District since 1984.
Success also has it challenges. The Rec District is deluged with requests for maps and signs and restrooms along the trail for which it has no money. And there are pressures to expand the trail north to the Sawtooth National Recreation Area and south toward Shoshone. "We continue to think big," said Crofts. "We'd like to expand the trail and become part of a national trail system. Why not?"
Michael Hofferber © 1992 All rights reserved.
