Humboldt County Releases Draft McKay Community Forest Trail Plan
McKay Community Forest logo
The following is a press release from the Humboldt County Administrative Office:
The Humboldt County Public Works today released the draft McKay Community Forest Trail Plan for public review. The purpose of the Trail Plan is to provide a blueprint for the development of trails, access points, and amenities to support recreational and educational activities within the Community Forest, located southeast of Eureka. The Trail Plan proposes a trail network with 27 miles of multi-use roads, multi-use trails, hiking trails, and mountain bike trails.
The draft plan is available on the county’s website.
The Trail Plan describes the overall goals, objectives, guiding principles, design standards, and construction practices for building sustainable trails to support outstanding outdoor experiences for a diversity of trail users. Sustainable trails support recreational use while preserving the integrity of the landscape and holding their form over time with limited maintenance. The six guiding principles in the Trail Plan are connectivity, integration, stewardship, accessibility, safety, and aesthetics.
A parking area was constructed in Cutten along Northridge Road in 2018 to provide dedicated access to the Community Forest. Final inspection of the Northridge Access Point for compliance with accessibility requirements is pending. Additional access points will be located along Harris Street and within Redwood Acres. Access points are expected to be developed near Redwood Fields, Manzanita Avenue, and Walnut Drive within 2 to 5 years as large parcels are permitted for subdivision.
The Trail Plan was prepared with an emphasis on accommodating users with accessibility needs to the greatest possible extent. The proposed trail network includes 1.5 miles of trails that fully meet the technical standards for accessible trails, and 0.7 miles of trails that meet most, but not all, the technical standards due to topographic constraints.
Trails will be developed incrementally in a logical sequence over the course of several years. The first trails to be built and opened to the public will be located near Northridge Road, Harris Street, and Redwood Acres. The timeframe for trail development will depend on available funding and working through the applicable permitting processes. Trail construction will depend heavily on the California Conservation Corps and the Volunteer Trail Stewards program of the Humboldt Trails Council.
Comments on the draft plan can be submitted by 5 pm, March 1, 2019, to Hank Seemann via e-mail to [email protected] or hard-copy to Humboldt County Public Works, 1106 Second Street, Eureka, CA, 95501.
Example trail map for McKay Community Forest:
Sample maps of the McKay Community Forest trails
Join the discussion! For rules visit: https://kymkemp.com/commenting-rules
Comments system how-to: https://wpdiscuz.com/community/postid/10599/
?That was very informative. Thank you Kelley. I really liked the maps.??
First comment: TY GD for allowing rhis tradoff to happwn
This sounds like a good public project. how will the McKay tract trail system address homeless encampments and how much will that cost and where does the $$$ ecome from? Where can I find the EIR? If it was exempted what was that exemption?
there are some documents here: https://humboldtgov.org/mckayforest
and in the project overview is this map. with the conservation easement to the east, this is an impressive preservation.
The forest around Cutten has few homeless encampments, is far from existing encampments and will probably continue to have few encampments. It’s a lot further from the center of town than the Arcata community forest, so its unlikely it will be much of an attractive nuisance for that kind of activity,
Build that wall
Definitely going to need terminator style robot cops patrolling 24/7 to avoid the area becoming the next set for a Mad Max movie….
?Good question.
This is another project where local or state inmate populations could be utilized for trail building purposes while simultaneously rebuilding discipline and a work ethic.
The labor is available, but currently we pay for them to sit around incarcerated indoors, doing nothing useful for the broader collective society
An example of going ahead with something for future benefit while there are huge problems left unsolved now.
That’s how the world works guest. What’s wrong with a project that helps with quality of life in Eureka? I think anyone who lives there could appreciate that, along with increase in property values. I personally wish cal trans would look into 101 eureka bypass, but that’s just me.
Almost right. That is how the world avoids work.