Jefferson County’s unfinished section of the Continental Divide Trail inched closer to completion last week when a Senate committee approved the Continental Divide Trail Completion Act.
Designated by Congress in 1978, the CDT runs 3,100 miles from Mexico to Canada along the Continental Divide, with 95 percent of the trail on public lands. Some 57 miles of the CDT run through Jefferson County, much of it along the border with Silver Bow and Powell counties.
Around 15 miles north of Butte, a nine-mile stretch of Jefferson County trail follows a frontage road. The CDT Coalition, the main nonprofit working to complete the trail, examines the land surrounding such gaps to determine the optimal nearby route before starting trail building.
“Some of this work has been ongoing, but this act really elevates the completion of the CDT,” said Dan Carter, CDTC Trail and Lands Program Manager, referring to the CDT Completion Act.
The bill, which directs the secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior to prioritize CDT Trail completion within a decade, passed out of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on Dec. 17.
It will next face a full Senate vote before going to the House of Representatives, hopefully by spring. Once the act has passed, said Carter, “we can expect more attention on completing the CDT in the Butte area.”
He estimated that work on Jefferson County’s trail gap – led by U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management staff – would begin within a year of the act’s passage, if not sooner.
“If there’s public land nearby,” Carter explained, “then it might be a bit faster, because it would just be a matter of constructing a trail.”
Find maps and more detail at cdtcoalition.org.
