The Whitetip Station along the Creeper Trail.
(Photos by Tom Howe)

This guest post is by Tom Howe, the man behind the Puddlecycle ride series. His last post was about biking to the solar eclipse.

The Salmonberry Trail is a project that will make use of a derelict rail line from the current end of the Banks-Vernonia Trail all the way to the Oregon coast. The trail has been in the planning stages for a long time, but if Virginia’s experience with the state’s 34-mile Creeper Trail is any indication, Oregon would do well to complete the Salmonberry sooner rather than later.

Back in the 1980s, the Virginia Creeper was itself an abandoned rail line that the US Forest Service decided to make into a recreation trail. Given the very rural nature of the area, this idea was met with some skepticism, but the trail has become wildly successful beyond anyone’s expectations. The trail holds special significance to me, as I once lived in Abingdon just a few blocks from the abandoned rail line. As neighborhood kids, we’d go over to the tracks and walk over the high trestles as a foolish/daring/scary thing to do. The only thing I ever saw on the tracks was a Drasine – a motorized vehicle about the size of an automobile.

If you had told me at that time that those tracks would one day be a bike path with 250,000 riders annually, I wouldn’t have believed it. That figure is over 25 times the combined populations of the two towns along the trail – Abingdon and Damascus. Trail-related tourism is estimated at $25 million per year, and each overnight visitor spends about $700 in the area.
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The Salmonberry Trail would connect Banks
to Tillamook on the Oregon Coast.
(Map by Oregon State Parks & Rec)

The proposed Salmonberry Trail, a path that would connect Washington County to the Pacific coast through the forest along a defunct rail line, has an official name and is about to get a full-time executive director.

Previously referred to as the “Salmonberry Corridor,” the trail also has an 11-member decision-making body with formal power to start raising the unknown millions that’d be required for the 86-mile proposal.

The Salmonberry Coalition will celebrate those milestones at its annual meeting next month. The public event is 10 a.m. to noon on Friday, Oct. 9, at Stub Stewart State Park.

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Coming (hopefully) sooner rather than later!

The Salmonberry Corridor project is moving ahead with as much steam as the Southern Pacific railroad cars that used to rumble through it in the early 1900s.

The project aims to re-open the derelict, 86-mile rail corridor to recreational use. When complete, it will connect the existing Banks-Vernonia rail-trail with the city of Tillamook on the Oregon Coast via a combination of paved and natural surface paths. Amazing huh?

You might recall our story back in June that teased a few of the potential design concepts being drawn up by project consultants. Now, as of last week, the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department has released the Salmonberry Corridor Draft Concept Plan (PDF, 44MB). [Read more…]

Potential cross-section of one segment of the Salmonberry Corridor via Walker Macy’s “Plan Book”.

An exciting evolution in the public process for the Salmonberry Corridor kicks off this week with two public open houses.
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The Salmonberry Corridor would connect Banks
to Tillamook on the Oregon Coast.
(Map by Oregon State Parks & Rec)

A bill to begin planning the Salmonberry Corridor — an 86-mile rails-to-trail project that would link Washington County’s Banks-Vernonia corridor to the Pacific Ocean — seems to be coasting through the state Senate, The Oregonian reports.

It’s backed by one of the body’s most influential members, centrist Democrat Betsy Johnson of Scappoose, who happens to be an occasional hiker and horse lover and says the path “could be a national, if not an international, draw” of tourism through her district.

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Sunrise in the Oregon Coast Range.
(Photos by Dan Kaufman)

This is a guest post written by Dan Kaufman. It first appeared on his website, CrankMyChain.com.
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The Salmonberry Corridor would connect Banks
to Tillamook on the Oregon Coast.
(Map by Oregon State Parks & Rec)

Turning the broken Salmonberry rail line into a biking, walking and horse-riding corridor between Washington County and the Pacific Coast has some of our neighbors worried that it’ll interfere with Oregonians’ age-old connection to the forest.

I get the concern, because my family has loved this forest for generations. But here’s what I see: Connectivity is what this proposed facility does best. Let’s connect more people to Oregon’s beauty, to the traditions I grew up with, and to a more resilient local economy.

When I first heard about the Salmonberry Corridor project, my thoughts were mixed. It’s a cool idea and use for a pre-existing, troubled rail alignment; but Northwest Oregon currently has many needs that are unfunded (Barbur Boulevard, 82nd Avenue, multi-modal improvements along Highway 101 main streets, etc.). Frankly, I was skeptical that adding a new path to the Coast was a priority.
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A proposed Salmonberry trail would link to the existing
Banks-Vernonia Trail 25 miles northwest of Portland.
(Photo: J.Maus/BikePortland)

A proposed 86-mile rail-to-trail project that would link Washington County to the Pacific Coast is the subject of two public meetings next month at either end of the future route.

The trail, whose cost would run into the tens of millions, has attracted early attention from touring organization Cycle Oregon and important legislators like state Sen. Betsey Johnson (D-Scappoose), who said in an interview last year that a trail through the Salmonberry River Valley would open up “some of the most beautiful land anywhere” to personal travel.

“I used to go up there before I was a legislator, when I had a life,” Johnson said.

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