Joseph Trail with Rail project hits halfway mark on end of year fundraising.
By Garrett Christensen on Monday, December 16th, 2024 in More Top Stories Northeastern Oregon News
JOSEPH – The Joseph Branch of the Trail with Rail project is continuing its end of year fundraising efforts and recently hit another milestone. As of December 5, the Joseph Branch Trail Consortium has raised $10,340 dollars, just over halfway to its $20,000 end of year fundraising goal. These funds will help cover day-to-day operations of the project going into 2025.
For those unfamiliar, The Joseph Branch Trail with Rail is a program meant to create a 63-mile non-motorized trail connecting the communities of Elgin, Minam, Wallowa, Lostine, Enterprise and Joseph. The trail, built alongside pre-existing railroad tracks, is intended to be accessible for hikers, cyclists and horseback riders, while also preserving the rails for future use.
In the past 4 years, the project has raised over $800,000 dollars. Aside from the main trail project itself, the project will feature pocket parks at various trail heads within city limits along the route. One of these parks opened at the Elgin trail head in May 2024 where the first trail section is also now open. Work on the remaining pocket park trailheads is ongoing, and a second trail section in Wallowa is under construction.
According to Gregg Kleiner, Project Coordinator for the Joseph Branch Trail Consortium, the hope is for the trail, parks, and various rail excursions (such as the Eagle Cap Excursion Train and rail rider carts) to serve as an enticing attraction for recreationists headed to and from Wallowa County. The goal is to potentially increase tourism revenue in the various towns along the route in addition to providing unique outdoor opportunities. A key piece of this plan is the preservation of the rails themselves, rather than dismantling them and simply using the former route. As stated by Kleiner in a recent interview:
“The railroad corridor is a community asset. The trail will add to that. It’s a great way to get people outside.”
While fundraising continues, work is also underway on the permitting and legal side of the project. According to Kleiner, the Consortium is awaiting a signature on the conditional use permit for the trail section in Union County by the Union Wallowa Railroad Authority (WURA). Once signed, application for the conditional use permit will move to the Union County Planning Commission for further review. WURA itself is an ORS-190 intergovernmental entity operated jointly by representatives from Union and Wallowa Counties and, in effect, acts as the landowner for the railroad corridor. A WURA work session to discuss the approval process in advance of signing the conditional use permit application was initially planned for the end of November but was postponed due to scheduling conflicts. As of the time of writing, a new date for either a work session or full WURA board meeting to approve the permit has not been publicly announced.
For more information on the Trail with Rail project or to donate, visit https://www.josephbranchtrail.org/
