Klamath County, Oregon

KLAMATH COUNTY, OREGON and infrastructure upgrades that contribute to the area’s high quality of life. For example, the Klamath Trails Alliance works with a wide range of public and private groups and landowners to acquire trail right-of-ways, build and maintain trails, and promote enjoyment of the area’s nat- ural resources. “Last year we hosted our first ul- tra running event, the Spence Mountain 50K,” says Director of Public Works, Jeremy Morris. “That drew in a hundred people from southern Oregon and northern California.” “Another unique aspect of Klamath: we have an urban trail network that gives folks a healthy commuting option during spring, summer, and fall, and that’s our network of paved trails,” Mor- ris continues. “Our community is broken up re- ally well by a ‘rails to trails’ conversion; it’s sev- eral miles long and paved, and it also goes for another 90 miles outside the community to the east. It’s the longest linear park in Oregon. We also have a few irrigation delivery canals that have trails along them. We have an east/west one, and a north/south one and some connec- tions in between.We’ve commissioned an urban trail master plan, which looks at the existing network and tries to anticipate what the future needs are. It projects out ten years. We’re using it to earmark some of our bike/pedestrian funds from the state gas tax in order to target some of those projects. “We recently completed a ‘safe routes to school’ master plan. It identifies the deficiencies around schools and one way to get kids back to being healthy and focused on alternatives to jump- ing in the car and getting delivered to school. It takes a one-mile radius around the ten or