Groundbreaking for Foothills Trail project set for June 7

A groundbreaking ceremony for a long-awaited stretch of the Foothills Trail is planned for Tuesday near Buckley.

The ceremony starts at noon and Pierce County Parks and Recreation will provide transportation from the Buckley Veteran’s Memorial starting at 11:15 a.m.

The ceremony celebrates the first of two projects designed to extend the Foothills Trail from South Prairie to Buckley. A 1-mile portion in the middle of this stretch was previously completed, but it is bookended by long unpaved sections.

Theresa Turpin, the parks department’s capital projects manager, says the project will pave the trail south of Buckley to the completed section. Paving the section toward South Prairie and replacing a bridge destroyed in a 2014 storm is planned for 2017. The bridge will be replaced by a culvert, Turpin said.

The Foothills Trail currently runs 15 miles from Shaw Road in Puyallup to South Prairie. It can be easily linked to Puyallup Riverwalk and Sumner Link trails. The trail is the backbone of a plan to create a trail network from Point Defiance Park to Mount Rainier National Park.

This story was originally published May 31, 2016 at 5:44 PM with the headline "Groundbreaking for Foothills Trail project set for June 7."