What the Salmonberry Trail Could Mean for Local Communities
The Salmonberry Trail is often described as an 82-mile trail from Banks to Tillamook. That is true, but it is also too small a way to describe what this project can become.
When complete, the Salmonberry Trail will create a continuous recreation corridor from the Portland metro area to the Oregon Coast, connecting communities, schools, businesses, forests, rivers, and coastal destinations along the way. It will also connect with other regional and statewide trail systems, including the Oregon Coast Trail, helping create a broader network of outdoor recreation and active transportation across Oregon.
The trail will restore, reuse, and reinterpret a historic rail corridor in ways that fit each community and landscape. In some areas, the trail may run alongside historic train rides, allowing visitors to experience both the rail heritage and the trail corridor. In other areas, the trail will adaptively reuse sections of the former railroad corridor for walking, biking, rolling, and connection.
Together, these experiences can help tell the deeper story of this landscape: the Indigenous peoples who have known and cared for this place since time immemorial; the railroad; timber communities; coastal settlements; and the rivers, forests, and coastlines that have shaped this part of Oregon.
A new analysis from ECOnorthwest helps answer a question we often hear: What kind of value could the Salmonberry Trail create?
The short answer: a lot, and not just in one way.
Trails create value in more than one form
ECOnorthwest separates the trail’s value into two related categories: economic benefits and economic impacts.
Economic benefits are the ways a trail improves people’s lives. That includes the value people receive from recreation, health improvements from walking and biking, safer travel options, environmental improvements, and quality-of-life gains for nearby communities.
Economic impacts are the dollars that move through the local economy. That includes visitor spending, local jobs and income, and construction activity tied to building the trail.
Both matter. One measures how people and communities are better off. The other measures how money moves through local businesses and regional economies.
A trail that people will use
ECOnorthwest looked at comparable trails in Oregon and Washington, including the Banks-Vernonia Trail, the Columbia Plateau Trail, and the Hertz Trail at Lake Whatcom. Similar trails attract roughly 100,000 to 200,000 visits per year, depending on location, length, access, and trail experience.
Using those comparable trails, ECOnorthwest estimates that the Salmonberry Trail could generate $8 million to $16 million per year in recreational enjoyment value, depending on who uses the trail and how they use it.
That number is not the same as direct spending. It measures the value people receive from being able to walk, bike, jog, explore, and spend time outdoors. In other words, it tries to put a number on something many trail users already understand: access to the outdoors has real value, even when no money changes hands.
Health benefits are part of the story
Trails also make it easier for people to move more often. That matters for public health.
ECOnorthwest estimates that physical health benefits associated with Salmonberry Trail visits could amount to $300,000 to $900,000 per year in reduced cost of illness. These savings come from the connection between regular physical activity and reduced rates of chronic disease, along with related productivity gains.
There are also mental health benefits that are harder to quantify but no less real. Time outdoors has been linked to reduced stress, anxiety, and depression. The trail would create more opportunities for people to move, gather, breathe, and be outside without needing to drive far from home.
Visitor spending could support local businesses
The Salmonberry Trail would also bring visitors into local communities.
If half of trail users are visitors spending money in nearby communities, ECOnorthwest estimates the trail could support approximately $3 million to $6.5 million per year in local revenue. That spending could show up in places people already know well: cafés, restaurants, lodging, gear shops, grocery stores, shuttle services, outfitters, and other local businesses.
This is especially important because the Salmonberry Trail will not be a single isolated path. It will connect to a much larger trail system, including the Banks-Vernonia Trail, the proposed Council Creek Regional Trail, and the broader Portland metro trail network. ECOnorthwest notes that this kind of connectivity can increase the trail’s appeal, lengthen visitor stays, and help attract regional and out-of-state users.
Local segments matter, even before the full trail is complete
The full Salmonberry vision is big. It will take time, funding, partnerships, permits, and persistence. But ECOnorthwest makes an important point: each segment can create value before the entire 82-mile trail is complete.
That is especially true on the Coast, where early trail investments can improve safety, access, and local connections.
In Wheeler, the trail can help connect residents and visitors to local businesses and destinations, improve accessibility for an older population, and create safer options for walking and biking through town.
In Rockaway Beach, the trail can reduce transportation burdens by providing a free active transportation option and improve highway crossing safety through treatments like rectangular rapid flashing beacons.
Near Neah-Kah-Nie Middle and High Schools, the trail can give students a safer alternative to walking or biking along Highway 101, supporting Safe Routes to School goals.
Near the Port of Tillamook Bay, the trail can strengthen connections between the Tillamook Creamery, the Tillamook Airport, employment areas, tourist destinations, and local community facilities.
These are not abstract benefits floating around in grant-speak fog. They are practical improvements: safer crossings, better local access, more transportation choices, and stronger links between the places people already live, work, learn, and visit.
The Salmonberry Trail is an investment in connection
The economic case for the Salmonberry Trail is not just that visitors will come, though they will. It is not just that local businesses will benefit, though they can. It is not just that people will walk, bike, and spend more time outdoors, though that is central to the project.
The larger case is that the Salmonberry Trail connects things Oregon needs to connect.
It connects rural and urban communities. It connects schools and neighborhoods. It connects visitors to local businesses. It connects people to rivers, forests, farms, coastlines, and history. And it connects today’s trail investments to a long-term vision for healthier communities, safer travel, and a stronger outdoor recreation economy.
That is why we are building the Salmonberry Trail segment by segment, mile by mile, partnership by partnership.
Because every completed section brings the bigger vision closer. And every section has the potential to create value right away.
