New access to Mount Dewey Trail opened for public parking - and walking

It's been 10 years since the community saw the map of a proposed new access route to the Mount Dewey Trail and its viewing platform for a scenic look at the town and harbor below. The wait ended with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new trailhead parking lot on Thursday, Nov. 14.

"It's heavily used already," Amber Al-Haddad, the borough's capital projects director, said a few hours before the official opening.

The trail runs from Bennett Street, starting at the new parking area on the road to the airport just past the elementary school, covering about three-quarters of a mile to connect with the existing downtown trail to the top of Mount Dewey.

A sign at the new trailhead tells people what is under their feet. The borough worked with the Wrangell Cooperative Association to name the trail Sháchk Kináa Deiyí, which means "Path Over the Muskeg."

It cost about $1 million to construct the parking lot and trail, which involved hauling in a lot of gravel, ground-covering fabric, drainage pipes and other material. "All of it was done with a motorized wheelbarrow," Al-Haddad said of moving the gravel.

The trail is about six-feet wide over the muskeg and then narrows to about four-feet wide as it enters the wooded area, she said. It includes two "elevated boardwalks" made of timber, providing a dry crossing over drainages.

The parking lot can accommodate about five vehicles, Al-Haddad said. "It's been a huge need for trailhead parking," she said, noting that there is no parking lot where the existing trail starts in a residential area above downtown.

The borough originally planned to use cedar logs and steps along the trail but switched to gravel to keep the project within budget.

The budget also included money to pay into a federally required fund to compensate for the loss of wetlands filled in for the trail work.

Ketchikan Ready-Mix and Quarry was the contractor on the project.

Federal grant funding covered about 90% of the project's total cost, with the rest covered by the borough and donations, including $5,000 from the Wrangell Cooperative Association and $15,000 from the Walker Foundation, Al-Haddad said.

The Walker Foundation, founded as part of the Alaska Island Community Services merger with SEARHC in 2017, helps fund health-related projects in Wrangell.

The U.S. Forest Service contributed about $27,000 as in-kind work on the project, Al-Haddad said. That included a Forest Service crew that helped build a 300-foot connector trail last year between Ishiyama Drive (Airport Spur Road) and the Volunteer Park Trail that takes off from behind the elementary school.

The new Mount Dewey Trail runs about one-quarter of a mile and then veers left for a half-mile to connect with the existing trail. At that quarter-mile marker, the borough would like, someday, to build a new trail, about three-quarters of a mile, reaching the Petroglyph Beach State Historic Site on the north end of the island.

The access route to Petroglyph Beach was on the map of proposed new trails shown at a 2014 public meeting put together by the borough's Parks and Recreation Department.