Bike trail ‘decades in the making’ opens new stretch in Thurston County
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- Prairie Line Trail now crosses the Nisqually River via a refurbished train trestle.
- Trail currently ends in Pierce County; abandoned tracks are visible toward Tacoma.
If you’re looking to get outside this weekend and enjoy the good weather – temperatures are expected to be in the 60s – there’s a new trail to explore in Thurston County, either by bicycle or on foot, perhaps with a furry friend at your side.
The new trail is the latest phase of the Prairie Line Trail, which now crosses the Nisqually River in Yelm and into Pierce County via an existing train trestle in the area.
The railroad and railroad ties have been removed from the trestle and replaced with a new surface, guardrails have been added, and about mid-span there’s a lookout point with a fixed set of binoculars.
The trail ends on the Pierce County side of the train trestle, but one can still see railroad tracks in the overgrown brush that head as far north as Tacoma, said Brad Chatwood, projects and programs manager for the city of Yelm.
The next step? Extend the trail through the city of Roy, he said.
“We have had conversations recently with Pierce County and city of Roy officials,” he said. “They actually came out to the ribbon cutting last week about doing a joint effort to bring this trail all the way through Roy.”
Yelm and its partners celebrated the ribbon cutting on March 25, reaching a milestone in a project that began years ago, according to the Thurston Regional Planning Council (TRPC), which shared some of that history on social media.
“This project has been decades in the making,” the post reads. “Before it was a trail, it was a railroad corridor between Olympia and Tacoma. In 1998, TRPC invested $340,000 of federal funding to help the city of Yelm acquire nearly 5 miles of this railroad corridor.”
The post said that: “Yelm has been steadily working on the Prairie Line Trail ever since,” and that the trail “connects to the Yelm-Rainier-Tenino Trail, providing further trail access in Thurston County.”
The Olympian met with Chatwood at the train trestle Thursday afternoon, and it was already busy as two bicyclists came rolling by, including Brian Jacobs of Tumwater.
“I’ve been on a bunch of these reclaimed rail trails, and I like going on them,” he said. “I’ve got a bike that can do it.”
Jacobs didn’t ride from Tumwater but first drove and parked at a trailhead in the area of First Street Northeast and Railway Road Southeast in Yelm.
Chatwood is looking forward to the day when the trail has been extended through Roy so that it can better accommodate the annual Seattle to Portland bicycle race, which passes through the area, he said.
Right now those riders have to negotiate state Route 507, which is unsafe, Chatwood said.
The extension “would be a huge benefit, not only for us and traffic issues, but for the cyclists themselves,” he said.
When will work on the next stage begin?
First, they have to figure out the funding, and that begins by looking at different grant opportunities, Chatwood said.
“We would like to, at the very least, just start with design,” he said. “Let’s see if we can secure some funding to get design going, and then obviously, throughout that process, continue to look for construction funding.”
