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LOGAN — Many who enjoy walking and biking around Utah State University and the Island neighborhood of Logan recently found that a popular pedestrian trail, in use according to some residents since the 1990s, has been blocked off by a single property owner, cutting off a key connection point between the city and Logan Canyon.
This small trail link running along an old canal company easement has been described in Logan's master plan as "one of the most important gaps in Logan's existing trail system," and it has been this way for years.
Before this roadblock appeared in January, a trail user could get from town into Logan Canyon and the surrounding wilderness following the canal easement that has run behind the neighborhoods since the 1800s when it was built. The only issue was a small section of shared driveway that had to be traversed in order to access the path.
"What the guy has done is pushed it to a breaking point," said Mark Lunt, who spearheaded the development of the Boulevard Trail nearby. Lunt says the temporary path proposed by the city, traveling through a busy university parking lot, over a dirt mound and onto a washed out section of steep trail is "not even remotely close to a legitimate solution."
Lunt has emails between him and current Logan Mayor Holly Daines, dating back to 2010, about the property dispute between the city, the owner of the driveway, and the property owner who blocked off the canal trail at both sides of his lot.
In 2010, Lunt asked Daines to look into a prescriptive easement on the trail, saying that because hikers have used the cut-through for years without complaints, they could be entitled to an easement designation.
The city's master trail plan, adopted in 2016, hoped to complete the connection within two years of the plan's adoption, but talks with the property owners fell through, according to Lunt.
Lunt said that the Lundstrom Park area of the canal trail got a significant makeover after a 2009 mudslide washed out the canal and killed three people. There is now a flowing water feature, landscaping rocks and paved trail. He says that in the Island neighborhood, which is much less affluent, the unmaintained trail has stagnant water for mosquitoes to breed in, and branches strewn about in a derelict canal.
"I just want some equity," he said. "Not even equity. Just let us use the trail."
Elite marathoner J.D. Thorne said the trail is "super important in the running community," including for Utah State University and nearby high school athletes. He says running groups are getting bigger, tax-funded elite running programs are gaining momentum, and Utah as a whole is putting increased emphasis on trail access for everyone, so he is surprised that an issue more than a decade old has not been resolved by now.
Many, including regular trail user Kaleb Shoell, are frustrated with the city's lack of progress on the issue, being told that "Utah is a 'private property state,'" and that an easement is not viable.
Daines, responding to an email from Shoell, told him that "oftentimes issues are not as simple as they appear." She said the city has tried to work with the owner of the driveway that connects 400 North to the canal trail as far back as 2015, allocating funds to purchase an easement or even an entire property to make that connection, but without success.
In the email, Daines said the canal company will likely request the gates barring the trail on either side be taken down, so they can access and service their easement. But Jason Morgado, the chief operating officer of the Cache Highline Water Association, said that the canal board has advised him to stay out of the dispute because it does not own the property and does not want to set a precedent for intervening with customers' private property.
Logan City Attorney Craig Carlston and Daines told KSL.com that they are in very early talks with those property owners once again, but the future of this vital trail connection remains uncertain, with little progress projected in the near term.
