The community will soon have public access to the Yelm Prairie Line trail as the final touches of phase 2A are completed.
Phase two extended the existing Prairie Line Trail to the Nisqually River.
Cody Colt, the City of Yelm’s public works director, said pavement throughout the trail was set to be complete at the end of last week. He added workers “just need to put up signs” once the pavement is complete.
“I would say it’d be open for public use by the end of the month. We want to make sure everything is good, and we want to go over our inspections,” Colt said at a City Council work session last week. “We’ll do a ribbon cutting once the signage is up because we have signage and some benches that’ll come in later.”
Colt anticipates the ribbon cutting to take place in the early spring and said Hanford McCloud, with the Nisqually Indian Tribe, will attend.
Phase 2B, which Colt referred to as “to the bridge and beyond,” would extend the trail over the Nisqually Trestle to connect Thurston County to Pierce County. The Nisqually Trestle, part of the Prairie Line Trail, will be upgraded in order to become pedestrian safe, as well. Colt said the city received a grant to complete the project, which will be presented to council soon.
The bridge itself will connect the Prairie Line Trail to Pierce County.
“This will be the only walking point of connection between Thurston and Pierce [counties]. The idea is the STP (Seattle to Portland riders), hikers, walkers, equestrians can all use this as a safe way to transit from Thurston to Pierce County,” Colt said. “This is our one point of transit that we can do to make pedestrians safe.”
Colt said the $1.615 million grant came from the Recreation and Conservation Office (RCO). With the help from a consultant, the city eventually chose SCJ Alliance to do the bridge’s programming.
SCJ Alliance previously helped work on the Prairie Line Trail, Colt said. Sargent Engineering will be used for upgrading the Nisqually Trestle, Colt said. The engineering process will take six months, he added.
“There’s some upgrades we have to do. The biggest thing we have to do is lead abatement. That means the bridge has lead paint on it from 1900-whatever. It’s been a long time,” Colt said. “It has some stuff on there that we need to protect the river from.”
Safety upgrades to the trestle include the raising of safety rails, along with new planks set down on the walkway to close any gaps on the bridge. The bridge will be safe for multiple forms of transportation, including walking, bicycle riding and horseback riding.
“The STP people will probably cut off 10 minutes of their ride to Portland. It’s a million times safer. When this is done, you could literally walk … or ride your horse to the Roy Rodeo,” Colt said. “It’s a very exciting project. The grant money is there.”
