Snohomish County celebrated a four-mile extension of the Centennial Trail in November, bringing the multi-use facility all the way to the Skagit County border.
Starting almost 30 miles south in the City of Snohomish, the trail is built mostly on the old Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway, which you know better as the Burke-Gilman and Sammish River Trails.
It would take about 12 miles of trail along the rail line to connect the Sammish River Trail in Woodinville to the Centennial Trail.
The Seattle Times recently featured the trail:
Winter or summer, Centennial Trail devotees ride on this old railroad line, biking through the rolling farmland and old lumber towns and on the railroad trestle where the Stillaguamish River rolls below. You can see leaping coho during their fall run if you time it right.
Some bike to the historic Bryant General Store, where chairs and picnic tables await weary weekend warriors who fuel up on coffee or fill their growlers with IPA.
Now, bikers can ride even farther north. As of November, a new link north of Arlington stretches the Centennial Trail to 30 miles, from the town of Snohomish to the Skagit County line.
It’s one of the most popular multipurpose trails in Western Washington. Cyclists and rollerbladers, joggers and dog walkers, even horse riders use it.
Comments
13 responses to “Extended Centennial Trail stretches to Skagit County border”
Nice! Once connected to the BG trail and Monroe and Duval we’ll have quite the “bicycle freeway”. .. Any word on plans for the trail north of the Skaget border?
Yeah. Looks awesome, and one day I hope to be able to ride on it when it won’t require having a car to drive all the way out there to access!
Might be easier to connect the Interurban to it.
But the Interurban sucks.
“inter urban sucks” Depends where you are on it. Up in Edmonds it’s rather nice.
The Interurban just a few years ago was really piecemeal. But the gaps are diminishing. I rode up from Fremont a few miles past Alderwood Mall yesterday (mostly to see the new-ish sections near Lake Ballinger) and there aren’t too many scary gaps left. And there were people out on the trail in SnoHoCo despite the lousy weather. Some kind of bridge from Mathay Ballinger Park to Aurora Village, more minor gap-filling in Lynnwood and northern Shoreline, and then we’ll just need to solve Fremont somehow…
If the interuban up in Edmonds connected to the Burke Gilman in Kenmore more safely it would also be good. I got totally lost up there trying to make that connection, got to ride on SR99 up and down a couple times looking for the right cross street. Mostly I needed a good map. And that is the 100% need, good signage to at least direct bicyclists to the safe/direct connection. I think I spent an hour riding out of my way before I got it down.
One of my commute routes when I worked in Kirkland involved getting from the Interurban to the BGT. I cut across in Shoreline using primarily 185th (bike lanes, moderate traffic, no I-5 interchange) and Perkins Way (fun, not much traffic). 195th is another option to head toward Perkins featuring quiet side streets and paths connecting them.
It does suck. Better than nothing but sucky nonetheless.
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