Bonneville Shoreline Trail to grow by two miles in Cache County. Here’s when you can hit the new section.

Cache County • A crucial missing section of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail in northern Utah will be built this summer after Cache County announced last month that it secured more than a half-million dollars for the project.

Trail enthusiast and naturalist Jack Greene has long hoped for a better trail system in Cache Valley. Now, with the county’s plan to construct two miles of the trail from Hyde Park to his home in Smithfield, he feels it is becoming more complete.

“I always envied St. George,” Greene said, “with 50 miles of trails running through its metro area. We finally made it to the appreciation and actual support for putting in a good trail system here in our valley.”

Cache County’s Trails Division has been working with North Logan, Hyde Park and Smithfield to plan more than seven miles of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail to connect Green Canyon to Smithfield Canyon — a project that has been divided into three phases.

The first phase will add approximately two miles of trail from Hyde Park to Smithfield’s Dry Canyon and will be funded by a $570,000 grant from the Utah Division of Outdoor Recreation. The county expects the new section to be open by fall.

Officials are actively seeking funding for the remaining two phases, which will cost about $2 million.

“Dry Canyon is one of my favorites,” Greene said, “and to be able to access it without having to drive, that’s a huge deal. If I could walk it on a trail, that would be fabulous.”

The effort to expand the trail was supported by a $50,000 feasibility study completed in December, funded with Recreation, Arts, Parks and Zoos tax funds, said Landis Wenger, a trail coordinator for the county. The study outlined trail alignments and estimated construction costs.

Wenger said extending and better connecting the Bonneville Shoreline Trail has been a top priority for decades. The end goal is to have about 65 miles of the trail running through the county.

“Green Canyon, like most people, is one of my favorite places to go,” Wenger said. “So, adding more connections off of it and tying Green Canyon to Smithfield Canyon, where you could park at one of those canyons and be in all of them, it’s a dream. It’s going to be incredible.”

Without coordination efforts between the three cities, this project could have taken up to a decade to complete, according to a county statement on the expansion. However, because of the collaboration, the full seven-mile connection is on track to be fully funded and potentially completed in three to five years.

The Bonneville Shoreline Trail’s full route is proposed to stretch from the Idaho state line down to Nephi, more than 280 miles.