OROVILLE — When President Barack Obama signed the massive Omnibus Public Land Management Act last Tuesday, he made a dream come true for a state group that's worked for more than 30 years to get a national east-west route designated.
A tiny piece of the bill designates the newly designated 1,200-mile Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail. While the routes that make up the trail are not new, supporters expect the "national scenic" designation to bring many more visitors to places like Oroville and Eureka, Mont.
It crosses three national parks and seven national forests — including the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest and the North Cascades National Park — as it hugs the Canadian border from the Pacific Coast to Montana's Glacier National Park.
It's the first time in 26 years Congress has authorized a new national scenic trail, said Mark Morris, Tonasket District ranger who helped to work out logistical difficulties of bringing the trail through Okanogan County.
Now that it's designated, he said, more people will come to hike, bike or ride horseback on the east-west trail. Most of the trail is not open to motorized vehicles, and mountain bikes will not be allowed on parts that go through wilderness.
"I envision people coming from Puget Sound, Wenatchee and other places, especially in the spring," when many trails are snowed in, Morris said.
He expects the Whistler Canyon portion of the trail to be popular because it is one of the few trails leading to national forest land to be snow-free early. It's the only national forest trailhead north of Blewett Pass that's on Highway 97.
Morris worked with Okanogan County commissioners, who purchased and are holding a piece of property to develop as the Whistler Canyon Trailhead off Highway 97, with parking and other amenities.
Charles Beall, spokesman for the North Cascades National Park, said over time he expects the trail to become nearly as popular as the other national scenic trail that runs through the park — the Pacific Crest Trail.
The entire trail largely consists of portions of other trails, roads and even highways pieced together to form an east-west route, said Jon Knechtel, acting executive director of the Pacific Northwest Trail Association. The Seattle association formed in 1977 with a goal of developing a trail from the Continental Divide to the Pacific Coast.
The association's efforts were hampered by a feasibility study which determined the cost of taking lands along the trail out of production would be excessive, he said. But the association continued to build and develop new trails along the route.
Knechtel said now that the trail is designated, the group will work to move sections of it away from roads and highways, whenever possible. He said to remain a national scenic trail, it cannot be on a highway for more than one mile at a stretch. He said the new trail may one day become part of a larger dream — to connect the Pacific Coast with the Atlantic Coast with one, long 7,700-mile trail.
When they were growing up, Dennis Quinn says, he and his brother Kyle (right) used to camp in the backyard. As they got older, they would go backpacking together, and their dream was to hike the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine.
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