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188 Chapter 15 Rails to Trails A curtain of cold rain descended west of the Cascades on a November day in 2002. But in the rain shadow east of the mountains, sunlight pierced the clouds and lit up hillsides blanketed with Oregon white oak in fall foliage of deep burnt orange. It was a good day for a hike on the Klickitat Trail. It was also the last day this trail would be open to the public for a while. On the following day, Washington State Parks Director Rex Derr would announce that he was closing most of the trail in an effort to ease tensions between hikers and property owners along the old rail bed. Birdwatchers and naturalists who hiked a section of the trail along Swale Creek that day were treated to views of a soaring golden eagle, deer loping along the canyon ridge, and scores of tiny goldfinches bursting from a clump of willows. Where the trail entered Swale Creek Canyon, green mosses and orange lichens covered the canyon walls. Hikers also encountered beaten-down stream banks and cow pies where cattle had access to the creek. At its opposite end, the trail begins at Lyle and follows the Klickitat River, crossing from the east bank to the west on an old railway bridge two miles upstream from the river’s mouth. It passes by a Native American treaty fishing site where spawning salmon leap through a narrow canyon as the river flows north between steep walls. Further north, it passes through the tiny communities of Pitt, Klickitat, and Wahkiakus. Bob Hansen and the other local volunteers who had organized this hike were fighting what appeared to be a last-ditch effort to keep the right-ofway in public ownership. Some were inspired by the Critical Mass urban cycling movement. Their goal: to keep hiking and occupying the old railbed while introducing it to new hikers to build a base of support. A handful of angry property owners along the railroad right-of-way had fought the trail, harassing hikers and even state workers. Forest Service RAILS TO TRAILS 189 employees had recently been threatened with a shotgun and forced to turn back. A hiker’s dog had been shot and killed. The campaign to build a 31-mile trail connecting the rugged lower Klickitat River with the stark canyons of south-central Washington began in 1992. It began shortly after the federal government transferred title to the railroad right-of-way to the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, a national organization dedicated to converting abandoned rail lines to recreational hiking trails. The idea had obvious appeal to hikers and trail advocates, and also to the Forest Service, which was charged with expanding recreation opportunities in the gorge. But local ranchers were adamantly opposed. Many opponents of the trail belonged to a national property rights group that was committed to repealing the federal Rails to Trails legislation. Though vocal, they appeared to represent only a minority of ranchers and others living long the rail right-of-way. A group of committed volunteers had their hopes set on converting the abandoned rail bed to a popular trail that would follow the Klickitat River north from its mouth through a steep-walled canyon, through gentler forested terrain, then east into drier country, providing access to a little-visited transition zone of Klickitat County range land. The former rail corridor had once transported sheep and lumber from Goldendale and the ranches and forests of south-central Washington to Lyle, at the mouth of the Klickitat. But the Burlington Northern Railway (which later became known as BNSF) had abandoned the line in 1992. Some years earlier, the Forest Service had begun writing a plan to restore the trail and improve its safety. But the agency misjudged the intensity of opposition from local ranchers and other landowners along the right-of-way. Eventually it backed down in the face of this opposition. So did the Washington State Parks Commission, which held title to the east end of the right-of-way. Parks Secretary Derr proposed to close the trail for at least two months, after which the parks commission would decide whether to terminate the state’s ownership of the railbed. Parks officials said they had no money to develop the trail and that holding title to the rail corridor had cost the state hundreds of thousands of dollars over the previous eight years. If the state relinquished title, the rail bed would...

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