BLYN — Soon, the “pathway to the Pacific” will gain a 0.75-mile stretch.
The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe expects the section of the Olympic Discovery Trail (ODT) spanning from the Clallam County line at Diamond Point Road past Knapp Road along U.S. Highway 101 to be complete this summer.
A parking lot will be built off Diamond Point Road to mark the trailhead. The lot also will be available for bus rider and carpool commuter parking.
“By the end of this summer, trail users can ride or walk on the ODT from Diamond Point Road to west of Port Angeles without traveling on the highway,” said tribal operations officer Annette Nesse.
“It will all be either trail or county road.”
Two grants from the state Department of Transportation will fully fund the trail and partially fund the parking lot. The Peninsula Trails Coalition provided additional funding for the lot.
Next, Clallam County will address a short trail section between the west end of the new trail and Pierce Road, Nesse said. That section connects to a hard surface path from Pierce Road to Old Blyn Highway, cleared by volunteers from Peninsula Trails Coalition.
The tribe and county hope to connect the official trail along Old Blyn Highway by traversing parcels of tribal land and working with owners of the other parcels. The tribe secured a grant to build the tribal portions of the trail in 2018, Nesse said.
“We partner with the Peninsula Trails Coalition and the county whenever the trail crosses tribal land,” Nesse said.
The tribe has been involved in constructing the Olympic Discovery Trail — which eventually will connect Port Townsend to La Push — since the 1990s.
When the tribe took possession of the Railroad Bridge in the early 1990s, it built the trail through its adjacent property on the east side of the river (Railroad Bridge Park), and across the bridge, Nesse said.
Later, volunteers redecked the bridge to create a safer walking and cycling surface.
Then, the tribe took the lead in the restoration of the Jimmycomelately Creek and Estuary in Blyn in the late 1990s. The two bridges across the new creek became part of another section of the trail, running along the railroad grade that once was part of Old Blyn Highway.
In 2010, with improvements to the Blyn tribal campus, the trail was completed from Blyn Road west to Blyn Crossing, connecting to the Jimmycomelately section.
The county completed the connection between the west end of the tribe’s Blyn section to West Sequim Bay Road, where the tribe completed the next section at its Log Cabin property.
Throughout the years, the tribe has funded the various trail sections using grant funding and tribal revenues, Nesse said.
“The tribe is a proponent of non-motorized transportation, and of the healthy recreational opportunities that the trail offers to people of all ability levels,” she said.
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Reporter Sarah Sharp can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56650, or at ssharp@peninsuladailynews.com.
