Let’s have a round of applause for the Chilkoot Indian Association.
While no one was paying much attention, the Haines-based tribe did as much for public recreation as has been done in a decade or more.
The CIA recently completed two miles of trails and boardwalk that snakes through the wetlands across the Old Haines Highway from the Haines School. The trail is wide, dry and sturdy, with pullouts featuring benches and wildlife-viewing platforms.
The trail connects the tribe’s Chilkoot Estates subdivision with Deishu Drive, joining the two neighborhoods and connecting them to downtown. Besides providing a footpath for walking, jogging or biking, it takes folks into the heart of a rich wetland, home to rearing salmon and trout, birdlife and larger critters, a place many people may not otherwise venture or appreciate.
Most of us were raised with a dim view of swamps, as places that breed mosquitos and need filling to make room for construction and development. Only more recently have we learned that those swamps are teeming with life, filtering water and providing habitat more critical for a healthy environment than dry land.
Besides transportation and recreation, the CIA’s trail has the potential to serve as a learning tool, teaching residents and visitors the value of protecting wetlands. In addition, the CIA’s trail promises to be the first link in a chain of trails around downtown.
For decades, citizens and municipal leaders have voiced support for a series of trails connecting downtown businesses and neighborhoods. Fragments of a trail system exist in places like Tlingit Park and the school grounds. By creating a pedestrian route from the state fair grounds to the police station, the CIA project is a huge jump start toward the dream of a connected network.
What’s more, the tribe – which has access to federal transportation funds – wants to build more. According to Tribal Transportation Coordinator Nick Kokotovich, the tribe is seeking agreements with the Southeast Alaska State Fair, Port Chilkoot Company and a private landowner to extend trails west from Chilkoot Estates to the Jones Point property of Takshanuk Watershed Council, including a spur over a low ridge there, connecting the trail to River Road.
Perhaps most promisingly, the tribe also has expressed interest in funding and building the borough’s proposed Portage Cove trail, from Picture Point to Portage Cove State Wayside. That long-discussed trail, now mostly just an idea, carries a ball-park price tag of $6 million. Early and tentative talks with the borough suggest the tribe might be able to fund and build the entire trail if the borough pays for design.
While the iron is hot and the expertise and potential funding is available, it’s time the borough and CIA got serious about working cooperatively to build the networks of downtown trails and pedestrian walkways people in Haines have dreamed of for decades.
Credit the CIA with taking a huge step toward that dream.