The borough is applying for state grant funding to design a trail tying Petroglyph Beach with the recently completed Bennett Street-Mount Dewey Trail connection.

Borough officials are seeking public comments, due by Oct. 30, on their intent to apply for project funding through the Alaska Department of Transportation trails program.

“We want comments from people, especially comments that are supportive or constructive in nature, to help us get it right for the community because, ultimately, it’s (the community’s) trail,” Amber Al-Haddad, the borough’s capital projects director, said in an Oct. 6 interview.

Al-Haddad said the state grant of up to $300,000 could cover all the planning, design and permitting work needed before construction of the new, 0.7-mile section of trail to Evergreen Avenue, near the Petroglyph Beach State Historic Site.

It’s the next phase of the borough’s work on the Sháchk Kináa Deiyí Trail. The name, shared with the borough by the Wrangell Cooperative Association, means “Path Over the Muskeg.”

Plans for the crosstown trail network emerged from a recreation planning process the borough completed in 2011-2012.

The borough completed the first leg of the trail network in 2024, when it unveiled a new access route to the Mount Dewey Trail that begins at a new parking lot and trailhead on Bennett Street, on the road to the airport just past the elementary school. 

Now, the borough is looking to extend the trail from Bennett Street to continue past the Mount Dewey spur trail, through wooded and wetland areas, to end near Petroglyph Beach.

Al-Haddad said the new section of trail would create economic opportunities, as it would appeal to tourists who want to walk between Bennett Street, Mount Dewey and Petroglyph Beach. She noted the Bennett Street trailhead has room to accommodate tour buses. 

The trail would also create the option for kids who live on the north end of town to take a roughly mile-long trail to the elementary school on Bennett Street, Al-Haddad said. 

“It would create that option for children, adults, visitors, everyone to use that (trail) to get from the end of the island” to the center of town, she said. 

Borough officials estimate that all of the design, construction and mitigation work needed to develop the new section of trail would cost roughly $1 million.

Al-Haddad said that while the borough assembly is not committed to the full cost of the project, it has committed to providing the 10% match required to receive state funding for trail planning. The planning phase would produce bid-ready design drawings and completed environmental permitting.

Following the design phase, she said, “our hope would be that we could be either in a position to submit a subsequent request to the same program for construction (funding), or, we’re always looking at other opportunities for funding, state and federal.”

Al-Haddad said constructive public comments on the borough’s grant application would make it a stronger contender for state funding. Anyone can direct comments to her at aal-haddad@wrangell.com.

She said future considerations for borough trail projects include a separate trail that could one day connect the existing Volunteer Loop Trail with the Etolin Avenue area, near the SEARHC hospital campus.