EMIGRANT - Emigrant is the social hub of the scenic Paradise Valley, sitting between Livingston and Yellowstone National Park. It is a prime destination for tourists and locals to get out and about for a concert, a bite to eat, or even some exercise with one of the most beautiful backdrops Montana has to offer.
However, there's no safe way to walk or bike from Livingston to Yellowstone National Park, and that's because Highway 89 is so packed with traffic. That has one national nonprofit organization working to turn an abandoned rail area into a trail so that locals and tourists can enjoy the great outdoors without being on the shoulder of a busy highway.
“Projects like this, I pour my heart and soul into them. I enjoy biking and recreating as much as anybody, and being able to have safe and easy access to separated, shared-use paths that get you off of the highway,” says Lucas Cain, project manager for the Northern Rockies Office Trust for Public Land.
The mowed path next to Highway 89 is the future location of the Yellowstone Heritage Trail. It is a huge, 49-mile undertaking, spearheaded by the community of Emigrant in hopes of a safer route to take in the great outdoors.
“Getting out and biking and not having to worry about being buzzed by cars going on Highway 89 is immensely important to me,” says Cain.
Cain is the local representative for the national nonprofit Trust for Public Land, tasked with uniting public and private stakeholders, including landowners who’ve graciously donated easements to get the first three miles of the path, centered in the Emigrant area, built in the next few years.
“It was actually one of our landowner partners who mentioned numerous times seeing a mother and children pushing a stroller across the highway to get from A to B, and walking in those unsafe conditions,” says Cain.
A similar story for Erica Lighthiser, a mom and bicycle tourist who cycled her family of five from Durango, Colorado to Whitefish, Montana about a decade ago.
“We had three kids and a dog, so we went very slowly and we spent four months on our bicycles traveling, camping and visiting lots of national parks and public lands along the way. I think riding through Paradise Valley was one of the scariest sections of the travel because we were on the highway, on the shoulder of the highway, but still on the highway, whereas a lot of other places we could travel through, there was either a pathway that was separated from the road or sometimes there were dirt roads and options that were alternative to the highway,” says Lighthiser, the managing director of Park County Environmental Council.
That epic four-month ride led Erica and her family to move back to Montana, and as a Livingston resident, she’s now heavily involved with this project via her career with the Park County Environmental Council.
“It's much more dangerous today riding on Highway 89. There's more traffic than ever. There's also more distracted drivers. I don't think I would undertake the same route today as I did in 2013, so I am so encouraged about this project,” says Lighthiser.
“I think tourists will use it. It is accessible. It will provide an opportunity to see the valley from a different perspective, and from a human scale perspective, you'll be walking or riding a bike. You won't be racing down 89 at 80 miles an hour, everything flying by you, you'll be able to take it in at a much more human pace,” says Max Hjortsberg, who works with Lighthiser as the managing director of the Park County Environmental Council.
It’s a pace those who try it often come to love, like Lighthiser's son Emmett, who was already biking at age two on that epic family adventure on the back of his mom’s bicycle.
“I generally enjoy biking more than any other choice of travel. It just makes me feel more free than if I was in a car,” says Emmett Lighthiser, who lives in Livingston.
A freedom many more will soon experience starting in Emigrant once this historic Yellowstone National Park abandoned tourist rail turns into a trail for hiking, biking, even birding, all while being safe.
Depending on funding and land easements, the 49-mile project is expected to take 5-10 years to complete.
