By Ted Blaszak, Guest columnist
I am from Tekoa, Washington (population 843). We are your neighbors to the east.
Though we are a small farming community on the Washington-Idaho border we are connected to many bigger cities by the John Wayne Pioneer Trail. If you were to leave your house this summer and get on a bike, horse, or sturdy hiking boots, you could cross almost the entire state on a path with no cars and end up in our town.
The trail is 285 mile long, a 100-foot wide ribbon of beauty extending through lush forests, dramatic scab lands and the vibrant pastures of the Palouse. Each step offers peace, tranquility and gracious vistas. The John Wayne Pioneer Trail is one of our longest trails.
Last year, in sneaky underhanded move state Senate Majority Leader Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, and state Rep. Joe Schmick, R-Colfax, used a capital budget amendment to try to close a 135-mile section of the trail in Eastern Washington and give that land to 200 adjacent landowners without public notice or hearings. They also happen to be Tekoa’s representatives in Olympia.
Some 6,000-acres of the trail — which the state in 1985 paid $3 million for the abandoned Milwaukee Road rail line — was nearly taken from bicyclists, hikers, horse riders, Boy Scouts, geologists, tourists, and historical advocates, without a single conversation ever held with any of them.
Fortunately, the legislators did not read their own proviso carefully and a miraculous typo prevented the implementation of the land grab. In the ensuing months there has been a public outcry over the shennanigans and 18 Washington cities from Spokane to Sequim have passed resolutions asking the Legislature to help fund and maintain the trail.